AI Recruitment Startup HireBound Raises $2 Million Seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital

HireBound, an AI recruiting platform, today announced that it has raised $2 million in a Seed round led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from Antler, Infinyte Club, and CareerNet.

At a time when AI agents are rapidly transforming knowledge work and fundamentally reshaping how companies operate, hiring itself is entering an AI-first era. As roles evolve and skill requirements shift, enterprises need recruiting systems built not just to track applicants, but to autonomously execute hiring workflows at scale.

The company plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate product innovation, expand go-to-market operations, and scale globally as it targets a 5x increase in ARR over the next 12-18 months.

The funding will be deployed across three strategic priorities. On the product side, HireBound will further develop its agentic AI engine to autonomously manage larger parts of the recruiting lifecycle across roles, geographies, and channels, while deepening integrations with ATS and HRMS platforms and strengthening hiring analytics. On the commercial front, the company will expand its sales, delivery, and customer success teams to support staffing firms, recruitment partners, and enterprise clients across SaaS and managed hiring models. The capital will also support key hires across engineering, AI/ML, and operations to power the company’s next phase of growth.

Today, HireBound’s agentic AI automates sourcing, engagement, screening, evaluation, and recommendations end-to-end. The platform has powered over 3 million candidate conversations and is trained on 2M+ resumes and 30,000+ job openings, delivering qualified, interview-ready candidates while significantly reducing recruiter workload.

Speaking on the Fundraise, Sharad Vij, Co-founder of HireBound commented ““Recruitment today is still heavily manual, fragmented, and slow. Traditional ATS systems are systems of record, not systems of action. HireBound changes that. Our agentic AI doesn’t just track candidates it engages, screens, evaluates, and delivers outcomes. With Kalaari Capital leading this round, we’re excited to partner with investors who understand category-defining technology businesses. This backing enables us to double down on AI R&D, scale globally, and evolve from a hiring copilot into a true talent-intelligence layer.”

“We are building HireBound for recruiting in the AI-first world. HireBound’s AI agents handle high-context and high touchpoint tasks across sourcing, engagement and evaluation while continuously learning from hiring signals and feedback loops. Our focus is on creating AI systems that can operate across diverse roles and geographies, with autonomous execution across the recruiting lifecycle..” added Kumar Vikramaditya, Co-founder of HireBound. 

Commenting on the investment Jayraj Bharat Patel, AVP, Kalaari Capital said “We believe HireBound is building the execution layer that recruiting has been missing. Their agentic architecture and recruiter-first design address a massive gap in high-velocity and multi-location hiring. As global demand for AI-driven efficiency grows, HireBound is well-positioned to redefine how modern hiring teams operate. We are super excited to partner with Sharad and Vikram on this endeavour.”

HireBound currently operates with a 15-member team across product, AI/ML, engineering, delivery, and go-to-market. With strong traction among staffing firms and enterprise talent teams, the company plans to deepen its presence in international markets over the next 12-24 months while adapting to regional compliance and hiring frameworks.

As it scales, HireBound aims to become the global default infrastructure for modern recruiting, where AI handles operational execution and human recruiters focus on strategic decision-making and relationship building.