The interview goes beautifully. The engineer understands the product, asks the right questions and wants the job. Then comes a small administrative detail: she lives in another country. Suddenly, the offer involves a second cast of characters - payroll providers, employment specialists, benefits administrators. A hiring decision has become an infrastructure project. This is the gap Omnipresent set out to occupy: the distance between finding someone you want to employ and being able to employ them properly.
- Omnipresent handled local employment so clients could hire without building their own foreign entities.
- Its Halfbrick case study reports 25 hires in 17 countries in under two months.
- Historical EOR fees started at £499 per employee each month, before the rest of the employment bill.
- Deel acquired the company in 2025; software and employer transitions are separate steps.
The border hidden inside the offer letter
The mechanism is an employer of record, or EOR. Omnipresent, or a local provider in its network, becomes the legal employer. The client supplies the work and directs the employee’s daily responsibilities. Employment administration sits with the provider. For a business making its first overseas hire, that arrangement removes a large preliminary task: creating an entity before anybody can start.
Omnipresent wrapped that machinery in the OmniPlatform, covering onboarding, payroll, expenses, benefits and offboarding. Its services addressed details that rarely appear in a recruitment pitch: social contributions, local pay cycles, employment taxes and termination requirements. Some countries require a thirteenth or fourteenth salary payment. A neat annual salary number can conceal a rather untidy calendar.
Directs the work.
Employment administration.
Receives local pay and benefits.
The first customer found an exception
Matthew Wilson and Guenther Eisinger met through Entrepreneur First in 2019. Wilson had studied physics at Oxford. Eisinger had served in the Austrian Special Forces. Both had experienced the friction of running international businesses. They founded Omnipresent that November, before remote work became a mass experiment.
Their early confidence had limits. Eisinger recalled giving a Canadian prospect benefits information that was challenged by another company. Investigating revealed unusual employee-specific exemptions; he said their proposal turned out to fit and won the deal. It is a founder’s account, with luck plainly acknowledged. It also captures the product’s central difficulty: a country rulebook is only the beginning. The person’s circumstances matter.
Investors initially questioned the market, Wilson later told Passionfruit. They doubted remote employment would become more than a niche. Then the pandemic arrived, and some returned with a different view. The founders’ idea had stayed broadly the same; the customers’ working conditions had changed. The company announced a $2 million seed round in 2020 and a $15.8 million Series A in January 2021.
Fruit Ninja meets seventeen rulebooks
Consider Halfbrick, the Australian studio behind Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. An Omnipresent case study reports onboarding 25 team members across 17 countries in less than two months. That is a vendor-reported result, rather than a promise about every future hire. Still, the example makes the service intelligible. A game studio could widen its search without making employment administration in seventeen jurisdictions its next creative project.
Other publicly named customers included QuotaPath and Supercede. The common need was a workforce spread across borders. Omnipresent occupied the meeting point of HR software and professional services, alongside alternatives such as Remote, Oyster and Deel. Its investor Kinnevik singled out understanding local differences. That was the positioning: software to organize the process, specialists to interpret the exceptions.
“Where Omnipresent sets itself apart is its expert understanding of local differences in a globalized world.”Ola Nordbye, Kinnevik · 2022
The interface also had to talk to other interfaces. Keka’s marketplace listing advertised an integration syncing leave, salary changes, commissions and expenses. That is mundane work with a practical payoff: fewer opportunities to enter the same payroll detail incorrectly twice. The employment service continued after the welcome email, through changes, reimbursements and departures.
The company applied remote work to itself. Eisinger described a management approach built around results and delegated authority, with an annual retreat budget to bring people together. Flexible hours still required time to overlap with colleagues and clients. The useful detail is the retreat budget: operating remotely did not make the need to know your colleagues disappear.
The fee is only the first number
Omnipresent historically advertised EOR pricing starting at £499 per employee per month. At that starting rate, twelve months of service fees would total £5,988 for one worker. Salary, employer contributions and benefits sit around that number. Currency handling and country-specific arrangements also deserve attention. A buyer needs a full employment budget, with the service fee clearly identified.
The model suits a company that needs overseas talent but has little reason to establish its own local operation yet. Its appeal changes when hiring concentrates in one country. Repeated per-person fees should then be compared with operating an entity and local payroll directly. The decision depends on headcount, duration and administrative capacity. There is no useful universal cutoff.
The lesson to copy is specific: select the hiring markets you actually need, ask who employs each worker, and compare complete costs in the same currency. Test the support process with a real question about your intended hire. A broad coverage map tells you less than a clear answer about one person.
A new login. Sometimes a new employer.
In March 2022, Omnipresent announced a $120 million Series B led by Kinnevik and Tencent. By October 2025, Eisinger announced that it had been acquired by Deel. Omnipresent’s story now includes the practical business of integrating the employment infrastructure it built.
Deel’s first worker guidance moved payslips, expenses and leave requests to its platform while preserving existing arrangements. Its January 2026 customer guidance distinguished workers employed by Omnipresent entities from those with third-party providers. Entity-employed workers were not required to move by default; partner-employed workers could transition where supported. A transition could require a new employment agreement under local law.
That distinction brings the story back to the offer letter. Changing the screen someone uses and changing the company that legally employs them are different operations. Omnipresent made international employment easier to organize. Its acquisition shows how much of that organization still lives behind the screen.