Recruitment Platform Celential Raises $9.5M

Celential.ai, a AI-powered software engineering recruitment platform headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, announced that it raised $9.5 million in series A funding. It comes as Celential appoints Amer Akhtar, former Yahoo small business president and ex-CEO of ADP China, as the company’s new CEO.

“Celential is on a mission to fundamentally transform recruiting and career development,” Akhtar said via email. “With proven customer success, our vertically focused virtual recruiter, powered by AI, enables fast-growing companies to compete for talent cost-effectively, with little friction, and without having to build and scale up a recruiting team and infrastructure. Over time, we’ll leverage the same vertical approach and deep insights into talent, industry, companies and opportunities to accelerate talent’s career development, through a virtual personal career agent solution.”

Celential was founded by former product leads at Salesforce, VMware, and Zynga, develops a platform designed to match hiring managers with engineering candidates by essentially “simulating” human experts. The startup’s AI-driven virtual recruiter finds, vets, and engages passive candidates behind the scenes, resulting in what Celential claims is a 70% present-to-interview ratio.

Announcement: Recruitment Platform Celential Raises $9.5M