For years, recruiters have relied on machine learning tools that search for simple keywords in resumes and LinkedIn profiles. While this approach helps narrow down the candidate pool, recruiters still have to manually review each profile to determine the best fit for the job. In comes David Paffenholz and Ishan Gupta, founders of Juicebox. Their AI-powered search engine uses large language models (LLMs) to bring precision to hiring.
Juicebox recently secured $36 million in total funding, including a $30 million Series A round led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Coatue, NFDG, Y Combinator, Lux Capital, and BOND to upgrade the startup’s AI engine, PeopleGPT. It analyzes a vast array of data to find the best candidates in the shortest time possible.
The manual processes that come with hiring are time-consuming and inadequate in a data-rich world. Startups and enterprises especially face obstacles since slow hiring can slow momentum.
Understanding this, Paffenholz and Gupta harnessed LLM technology to enable recruiters to search not by keywords but by context and semantics. After graduating from Y Combinator in the summer of 2022, the founders spent significant time refining and testing PeopleGPT until its launch in late 2023.
Powerful Validation
Without a formal sales team, the startup has organically attracted over 2,500 customers including well-known names like Cognition, Ramp, and Perplexity. Juicebox has also crossed $10 million in annual recurring revenue in such a short time.
Sequoia partner David Cahn explained his interest: “An early-stage startup founder told me he was using Juicebox exclusively for recruitment, successfully hiring over a dozen people without external recruiters—a remarkable achievement. When we learned our own internal recruiter at Sequoia was also leveraging Juicebox, my excitement about the platform’s potential skyrocketed.”
What impressed Cahn most was the team’s lean operation. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a company with four people get to 2,000 customers without a dedicated sales team. That’s a testament to the product’s inherent value.”
What makes Juicebox stand out is how it combines large-scale semantic search with automated outreach. PeopleGPT can scan tens of thousands of profiles instantly, evaluate candidates against employer criteria with human-level nuance, and then directly engage candidates via email or even schedule initial calls.
This end-to-end automation slashes recruitment cycles and frees talent teams to focus on relationships and hiring strategies instead of tedious sourcing tasks. Unlike traditional applicant tracking systems, Juicebox operates as a proactive AI-driven assistant, finding hidden talent and initiating contact.
A Dynamic Market
While Juicebox is seeing steady growth, competitors like Eightfold.ai and HireEZ also integrate AI-driven search and engagement. But Juicebox’s founder-driven model and early adoption across startups and enterprise tech firms give it a unique position.
David Cahn sees Juicebox becoming foundational to startup hiring ecosystems, comparing its potential trajectory to Stripe’s dominance in payments: “I believe Juicebox will be the default tool startups use to hire their first employees. It fits seamlessly into early teams’ tech stacks and scales up with them.”
With the latest funding, Juicebox plans to enhance PeopleGPT’s capabilities further. The company will focus on scaling engineering and product development, expanding the AI’s contextual understanding, and refining outreach automation.
