ai-hiring
(3)
Joonko
Joonko was an Israeli-founded, AI-powered diversity recruiting platform that promised talent-acquisition teams automated access to pre-vetted candidates from underrepresented groups - women, people of color, and veterans. Founded in 2016 by Ilit Raz and named after Everest pioneer Junko Tabei, the company graduated from Techstars Atlanta and the Salesforce Incubator, and raised roughly $30 million from investors including Insight Partners, Target Global, Kapor Capital, and Vertex Ventures Israel. In 2023 the story collapsed: an investor confronted Raz over inconsistencies, she admitted to fabricating customer contracts, bank statements, revenue, and candidate counts, and she resigned. The SEC charged her in 2024 with a $21 million 'AI washing' securities fraud, and Joonko filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after shutting down and laying off all staff.
HackerRank
HackerRank is a technical skills platform that helps companies screen, interview, and hire developers based on what they can actually build rather than what their resume claims. Founded in 2009 by Vivek Ravisankar and Hari Karunanidhi, the company runs a two-sided model: a community where millions of developers practice coding challenges, and an enterprise product that lets 3,000+ companies - including a large share of the Fortune 100 - assess candidates with real-world coding tests, live pair-programming interviews, and, increasingly, AI-assisted evaluation and proctoring.
Gyfted
Gyfted is a Stanford-connected, remote-first HR-tech company that builds psychometric and cognitive assessments powered by behavioral science and AI. Its free consumer quizzes (Big Five, EQ, DISC, cognitive ability) draw millions of test-takers via organic search, while its B2B software helps founders, recruiters and team leaders screen candidates and hire for role and culture fit. Co-founded in 2020 by CEO Robert Kowalski with a team that includes Stanford GSB psychometrician Michal Kosinski as an adviser, Gyfted has raised roughly $1.3M in early funding.