The power of AI on workplace skills: Our partnership with Techwolf
Today, we are thrilled to share our lead investment in the $42.75 million Series B funding round for TechWolf. Based in Belgium, TechWolf is at the forefront of innovation in a space that we have been following for some time as a team. At Felix, our consistent approach of closely following consumer behaviors, whether at home or in the workplace, has led us to explore the “modern workplace” since our very beginnings. As advancements in AI began to accelerate, we leveraged this past experience to investigate and understand AI’s impact in the workplace, leading us ultimately to the HR function.
Through this work, we became convinced that a skills-based approach is essential for future-proofing organisations. We were subsequently impressed with what we found in TechWolf — an AI-powered Skills Intelligence Platform to help enterprises establish an automatic, instant, and always up-to-date view of skills and skill gaps across their workforce.
We are joined in this funding round by esteemed partners, including 20VC, Workday Ventures, ServiceNow Ventures, SAP, Notion Capital, SemperVirens, and existing investors Acadian Ventures, Fortino Capital, and Stride.VC. Together, this syndicate spans a strong base across the US and Europe. Coupled with the strides and traction TechWolf has based, we are excited that this round also underscores the vibrant AI innovation landscape here at our home in Europe.
Why Felix is partnering with TechWolf
HR decisions have long relied on credentials and resumes, which often overlook talented individuals who gained skills through non-traditional routes. This focus on degrees narrows the talent pool and perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities. These outdated methods lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
As a venture firm for the creative class, we felt an alignment with the need to solve these problems and enable individuals to focus on actual skills and competencies, rather than just credentials, and therefore promote meritocracy, diversity, and inclusion.
By enhancing how companies understand and manage their workforce’s skills, TechWolf is directly contributing to the evolution of the modern workplace, and is one of the most exciting SaaS propositions we have come across. We welcome them to the Felix SaaS portfolio family alongside our longstanding partnership with companies such as TravelPerk, Mirakl, Pigment, Forter and more.
Why TechWolf stands out
TechWolf was founded in 2018 by Andreas De Neve, Jeroen Van Hautte, and Mikaël Wornoo while they were studying engineering at Ghent University. TechWolf’s incredible 12x revenue growth since its €10 million Series A round in 2022, along with its top-notch customers like Booking.com, KLM, United Airlines, MetLife, IQVIA, Synopsys, GSK, HSBC, bp, Virgin Media O2, and Workday, shows just how innovative and in-demand the company is.
TechWolf’s cutting-edge AI platform uses 15 proprietary language models, outperforms other models in accuracy, transparency, and flexibility. Supported by peer-reviewed research applied to over 1.5 billion labor market data points, 40 million skill events, and 250,000 recognized skill forms.
TechWolf also leads the way in responsible AI practices and effective ecosystem integration, constantly pinpointing skill gaps with precision and driving targeted upskilling and reskilling efforts. The company collaborates with institutions like Cambridge University to push forward AI research in skill inference and job ontology technologies.
Their tech integrates smoothly with existing HR systems (SAP/SuccessFactors, Workday, ServiceNow) and workplace tools through an API-first approach. Instead of trying to replace current HR platforms, TechWolf connects to them via API and uses advanced AI to pull actionable skills insights from the employee data already in those systems, including data from everyday work tools, unlike traditional HR apps that are stuck with siloed HR data.
A unique syndicate to ‘go big’ in the US
This investment underscores our belief in TechWolf’s vision to make work skills-based, helping everyone thrive in their careers while aligning with our broader strategic goals and investment manifesto.We are thrilled to lead this funding round alongside such an incredible group of partners and look forward to accelerating TechWolf’s expansion, especially in the U.S. and enterprise sectors.
Notably, this marks the first time the three giants of HR tech — Workday, ServiceNow, and SAP/SuccessFactors — are investing together in the same company, at the same stage. We’re also joined by exceptional business angels like Adam Miller (founder of CornerStone OnDemand), Tudor Havriluc (former VP People at Meta), Mehdi Ghissassi (Head of Product at Google DeepMind), Douwe Kiela (former Head of Research at Hugging Face), Joe Dobrenski (former Talent Partner at Sequoia), Nicholas Granatino (STEM AI), Dries Buytaert (Founder of Drupal), Ben Schrauwen (Founder of Oqton), and Paul Melchiorre (former CRO at Atlassian).
The growing importance of skills-based organisations
The rapid pace of technological change makes a skills-based approach crucial. With 44% of worker skills expected to be disrupted by 2027, understanding workforce skills helps companies proactively reskill and upskill employees, ensuring agility and resilience. Skills-based hiring and internal mobility address talent shortages, improves retention, and builds a future-ready workforce. This approach optimizes workforce deployment by identifying transferable skills, guiding targeted learning programs, and aligning workforce planning with business goals.
The application of AI in this sector, in particular, can be transformative. AI can process and interpret data far more quickly and accurately than humans, allowing for the identification of skills gaps and emerging trends that might be missed by conventional methods.
For example, AI can highlight which skills are becoming more critical in the industry and identify employees who have the potential to be reskilled for these new roles. This data-driven approach ensures that talent management is more precise and effective. AI’s ability to handle large volumes of data means it can continuously update and refine its insights, ensuring that companies always have the most current and relevant information. This dynamic capability is crucial for keeping up with the fast-paced changes in the job market and technology landscape.
Overall, this investment highlights our confidence in TechWolf’s ability to drive significant change in the HR tech space. Biggest congrats to Andreas, Jeroen, Mikael and the entire TechWolf team. We look forward to supporting their growth and success!
