Belgian AI company TechWolf raises $42.75 million in a Series B round to build the AI Infrastructure layer for Skills.

Ghent, Belgium, June 25, 2024 — TechWolf, a leading Belgian AI company, is proud to announce the successful closure of a $42.75 million Series B funding round to build the AI Infrastructure layer for Skills.

The round was led by Felix Capital with participation from 20VC, Acadian Ventures, Fortino Capital Partners, Notion Capital, PMV, SAP, SemperVirens, ServiceNow Ventures, Stride.VC, Workday Ventures and notable AI leaders from Deepmind and Meta. TechWolf is especially proud to bring together three world-class enterprise software companies — SAP, ServiceNow, and Workday — to invest in its vision.

“At Felix Capital, we have devoted significant resources to exploring the impact of AI on HR, influenced by the steady innovation from European AI startups. We have been particularly impressed by TechWolf's capability to transform its clients into fully-fledged 'skills-based organisations'. This transformation promotes flexibility, fuels innovation, and boosts employee engagement, ultimately optimising talent utilisation and fostering continuous learning.

We are thrilled to lead this funding round alongside a remarkable group of partners, aiming to accelerate TechWolf’s expansion, especially in the U.S. and enterprise sector,” said Julien Codorniou, Partner at Felix Capital, who will join the board.

Based in Belgium, TechWolf is fast emerging as a European innovator as the continent continues to leverage talent and propositions at the forefront of AI. TechWolf is building the AI infrastructure layer for skills, creating foundational data assets and frameworks that enable a skills-first approach to talent management. Their innovative technology infers employee skills from digital interactions by leveraging advanced AI language models, thus eliminating the need for manual skills assessments. This technology enhances the capabilities of market leaders like Workday and SAP by providing high-quality skills and skill gap data to the HR landscape.

TechWolf has experienced 12x revenue growth since its last funding two years ago and will use the new funds to expand its presence in the US and invest further in AI development. The company plans to open its first US office in New York City in September 2024, led by founder Mikaël Wornoo, who will relocate with a team of five employees. With more than 50% of its pipeline already in the US, TechWolf has recently signed prominent clients such as United Airlines, MetLife, IQVIA, Synopsys & Workday.

TechWolf’s task-optimised AI models set new standards, outperforming leading benchmarks at a fraction of the runtime cost. Over the past five years, the company has published seven peer-reviewed articles and has 15 language models in production. Its datasets 1 include 1.47 billion labour market data points, 38 million captured skill events, and 223 thousand recognised skill forms.

In addition to the new funding, Diane Gherson, former IBM Chief HR Officer and current board member of Kraft Heinz, will join TechWolf’s Board of Directors as an independent director, bringing a wealth of HR expertise to the company.

“I am really passionate about the need for companies to build a skills-based organisation to compete in the digital economy, which requires a robust and dynamic skills infrastructure.

We were lucky to have the internal AI resources to build one at IBM, but as I talk with my peers, they are struggling to find that capability externally —one that can draw from the vast amount of information on people who sit in HR, financial and sales systems, as well as market reference points.

I came across TechWolf because of their excellent reputation in large sophisticated enterprises in Europe. And when I got to kick the tires on the technology and client process I was hugely impressed.”, said Diane Gherson, former CHRO at IBM and Independent Board Member at TechWolf.

TechWolf was founded in 2018 out of Ghent University (Belgium) and Cambridge University (United Kingdom) by Andreas De Neve, Jeroen van Hautte and Mikaël Wornoo, who met while they were computer science engineering students. The full TechWolf team is now over 80, with the majority based in Belgium and the rest in London. Further team members will be added with the upcoming addition of the US office after the close of this funding round.

Lastly, TechWolf’s investors have committed 3% of all shares to the TechWolf Foundation, a non-profit/charitable foundation committed to causes adjacent to TechWolf’s mission and story like (i) funding underrepresented founders, (ii) promoting women in STEM and (iii) wolf rescue programs and sanctuaries. The company also decided to increase the size of its employee stock option pool from 10% to 15%.

About TechWolf

TechWolf is a Belgian-based AI company providing API-first Skill infrastructure for large company CHROs who are dissatisfied with their ability to make data-driven people decisions, despite investing in a myriad of talent applications. TechWolf’s advanced AI creates high-quality skill profiles by leveraging data from systems where employees do their work, unlike traditional applications that are only using limited and siloed HR data. Notable customers include GSK, HSBC, bp, United Airlines, Metlife, Synopsys, IQVIA, Workday, KBC, Booking.com and KLM.