staffing-and-recruiting
(5)
ManpowerGroup
The company that helped invent temporary staffing is rebuilding itself for an age of AI agents, scarce skills and permanent uncertainty. Its wager is that better technology makes human judgment more valuable, not less.
Contrario
Contrario is a San Francisco AI recruiting company that pairs specialized human recruiters with AI agents to source, screen, and deliver vetted candidates to startups within days. Founded in 2025 by Stanford dropouts Arya Marwaha and Aditya Sood, it operates as a hybrid between a traditional agency and recruiting software, using AI talent scorecards and graph-based matching while automating scheduling and follow-ups. The company reached roughly $6M in annualized revenue and paid over $1M to recruiters within six months of operating, and raised a $2.3M seed led by Nexus Venture Partners.
Hirey AI
Hirey is an AI-first recruiting platform built around a chat-based hiring app and an AI agent named Rey that sources candidates, screens them, checks availability, and books interviews automatically. Founded in 2021 by Walter Wu and headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, Hirey focuses on high-volume, fast-turnover hiring in sales, caregiving, and healthcare staffing, where speed matters more than paperwork. The company says it has helped 500,000+ job seekers and is trusted by 10,000+ hiring companies, and it has raised roughly $14M through a Series A led in part by DST Global.
Qlay
Qlay is a San Francisco-based AI hiring company that sources, vets, and shortlists remote engineering talent - notably from Vietnam and Africa - and pairs it with an AI Proctor that catches AI-assisted cheating during interviews and coding tests. Using eye-gaze tracking, speech analysis, a phone-as-second-camera setup, and process monitoring, Qlay aims to make technical hiring both fast (shortlists in about a week) and trustworthy in an era when candidates can quietly lean on tools like ChatGPT.
QLU.ai
QLU.ai is a San Francisco-based AI platform built for executive search firms. It scans millions of profiles using live market signals to surface qualified leadership candidates in seconds instead of months, then automates outreach across email, LinkedIn, phone, and text. Founded in 2020 by Fahad Jalal, QLU pairs a 10-billion-plus data-point database with natural-language search, automated market maps, and AI voice callers to help recruiters cut research cycles from weeks to minutes.