Founded in 2022 by Maxime Legardez, Paul-Louis Caylar and Benjamin Chino, Maki experienced meteoric growth in 2024 with more than 300% growth. And for good reason, with its disruptive value proposition which is based on agents IA capable of automating up to 80% of pre-selection and interview processes, the startup quickly established itself among large international groups such as H&M, BNP Paribas, PwC, Deloitte and FIFA. Customizable according to the client's branding and specific needs, these agents – who operate both by telephone and on a mobile application – not only significantly accelerate recruitment times but also reduce turnover.
“24/7 the avatar will rely on psychometric science to pre-screen, select candidates, test sets of SKILLS – empathy for example for a salesperson in a store, but also resilience, language skills, the ability to solve problems, etc., all with less bias than a human on issues of gender, age or ethnicityexplains Maxime Legardez, co-founder Maki before continuing, For groups like H&M, which receives more than 2 million CVs per year, this translates into a saving of 50,000 hours of work on the screening and interview part and a three-fold reduction in recruitment times. HR metrics are now becoming business metrics that speak to the CEO, the operations director, the technical director, etc. At Maki, we don't sell software, we sell agents who allow companies to overhaul their talent department for more gains and results.”
1 billion in recurring annual revenue in a few years
After a seed fundraising of 6 million euros, Maki announces a series A of 26 million euros led by Blossom Capital, with the participation of DST Global and historical investors Frst, GFC and Picus Capital. This fundraising comes in a context of accelerated adoption of AI in HR processes, particularly in the United States, a market on which Maki is focusing its efforts with already 30% of its activity.
“The tour was completed in a month”explains Maxime Legardez, CEO of Maki. “Which convinced investors, in particular Blossom – who participated in the advent of two unicorns over the last 24 months including Pigment – above all, it is our results for 2024, with significant growth, six-figure contracts over several years and a significant return on investment for our clients. Added to this is our innovative approach of AI agents rather than just software that represents enormous potential for the future of human resources.”
This ambitious vision opens up considerable prospects for Maki. As the co-founder explains: “If we can realize our vision, the potential to become a billion-dollar company in annual recurring revenue is entirely plausible.“
The year is therefore off to a flying start for Maki, which notably plans an acceleration in terms of the product roadmap, recruitment and marketing of its agents. “By 2026, we should recruit around sixty new employees including a CTO, product engineers, machine learning to develop our agents, but also data scientists to train this set of data that makes up these tens or even hundreds of millions of applications and which will allow us to customize our agents for different use cases and maintain growth of 300% in 2025,” explains the co-founder.
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