Clustree, the automated HR recommendation platform for career development and recruitment, has today announced a €7m (£6.1m/$7.9m) Series A round led by European investor Creandum, with the participation of Idinvest Partners and existing investor Alven Capital. The company offers artificial intelligence to remove human bias and stereotyping from the interpretation of internal and external HR data, with a mission to build a technology solution that delivers fact-based and proactive decision making for career development and recruitment.
Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan (photo), CEO & Founder, said “Stereotypes are fast to build but take a long time to erode – that is why they exist. Clustree is here to switch that. We change people’s lives because we free HR from bias. Through the use of our AI, we empower our clients in the global war for talent, to recruit and grow employees with continuous, tailormade and employee-centric careers that really surface the dormant potential within people, and maximize HR efficiency. We are glad to see that our vision is shared by some of Europe’s leading venture capital firms with the right skills to help bring Clustree into the world”.
With very limited sales and marketing resources, the company has been able to secure multi-year contracts with massive international enterprises. The solution is now used across 30 different countries by industry leaders such as Orange, Crédit Agricole, SNCF, Carrefour and L’Oréal, helping them to dramatically reduce external recruitment costs and increase employee retention.
Clustree’s artificial intelligence technology learns and constantly improves from 3 different data sets: external HR data, internal client HR data and the continuous feedback on recommendations from both HR and employees. Existing clients are becoming so convinced by the recommendations, that HR teams are now allowing the artificial intelligence to directly interact with individual employees for career coaching.
The €7m Series A funding will allow the company to develop its sales, marketing, engineering and product teams, consolidate its market position in France and prepare for international expansion.
Carl Fritjofsson, Principal at Creandum, said “Human Resources remains a massive market that is has not largely been disrupted by technology. Retaining and developing talent is big priority for any organization, and with the development of artificial intelligence we now see a new generation of technology solutions developing to serve this. Clustree is one of the most impressive technologies we’ve seen to support HR decision making. We strongly believe in a future of data-driven HR, and Clustree is leading the charge”.
Carl Fritjofsson from Creandum and Guillaume Durao from Idinvest Partners will join Clustree’s board to offer hands-on advice and practical support.
Guillaume Durao, Investment Director at Idinvest Partners, said “In the past 10 years, a lot of company departments, like sales, started to make data-driven decisions. Clustree is now offering this opportunity to HR departments with a new generation of talent management solutions. This was especially appealing to us as investors. With the threats faced in the job market as automation replaces many roles, Clustree is a great example of an AI that is actually empowering humans, helping HR to do their job in a more efficient way and creating unlimited opportunities for employees”.
In 2016, Clustree experienced 230% revenue growth and 100% client retention, and was named a Cool Vendor by Gartner which recognized that “Clustree is unique in that its usage of natural-language processing (NLP), machine learning and predictive analytics goes beyond talent acquisition to also support other talent mobility and HR topics”.