Seattle-area recruiting software startup SeekOut laid off 16 employees, or about 7% of its workforce.
The company confirmed the layoffs in response to a GeekWire inquiry Wednesday, citing a restructuring to align with growth investment areas. The startup now has about 200 employees.
SeekOut is still hiring and plans to reach 225 employees by year-end.
The company raised $115 million last year, pushing its valuation past $1.2 billion, making it one of Seattle’s so-called “unicorn” startups.
It’s one of several Seattle unicorns to reduce headcount amid the broader tech slowdown. Rad Power Bikes, Highspot, Karat, Convoy, Flexe, and others have cut staff over the past year.
Founded in 2017, SeekOut’s software is used by more than 1,000 companies including Salesforce and McKinsey & Co. to help with recruiting. It pulls data on more than 700 million potential candidates from a myriad of sources, including GitHub and published papers. The software also features built-in diversity filters.
Earlier this year SeekOut launched SeekOut Assist, a generative AI product based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT that aims to speed up how recruiters find qualified candidates.
The company landed $65 million in 2021, when it won Startup of the Year honors at the GeekWire Awards.
Its investors include Tiger Global Management, Madrona Venture Group, Mayfield, and others. SeekOut has raised $189 million to date.
SeekOut CEO Anoop Gupta is a former technical assistant to Bill Gates who previously led Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group. He won CEO of the Year honors at the 2022 GeekWire Awards. His co-founders include CTO Aravind Bala, a former Microsoft partner engineering manager who worked on products including Bing and Office, and Vikas Manocha and John Tippett, who both also worked at Microsoft.
