Israel-based Gloat, an AI-powered career development platform for employees at companies like Unilever, Oracle, Cisco, and PayPal, raises $25M Series B
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat :
Context & Ripple Effects
Gloat's $25M Series B lands mid-way through a 2019 funding run in AI-powered HR software: Tel Aviv neighbor Hibob raised an $20M Series A extension for cloud HR and benefits management in March, and AllyO pulled in a $45M Series B for AI hiring and onboarding in June. What distinguishes Gloat is its wedge — an internal career marketplace already deployed at Unilever, Oracle, Cisco, and PayPal rather than a point tool for recruiters.
The round also reads differently in hindsight: the same company went on to raise a $57M Series C led by Accel in 2021 and a $90M Series D led by Generation Investment Management, taking total funding to $192M — making this Series B the early checkpoint of a sustained bet that big employers will buy software to move talent internally.
First-order effects
- Gloat gets the capital to scale its internal-jobs platform across its existing enterprise base — Unilever, Oracle, Cisco, and PayPal employees are the immediate users of whatever expansion this funds.
- Investors are validating 'internal mobility' as a distinct software category, separate from the applicant-tracking and onboarding tools Hibob and AllyO were raising against earlier in 2019.
Second-order effects
- Rival HR-tech fundraisers like AllyO and Hibob now compete for the same enterprise HR budgets, pushing them to differentiate — AllyO on automating hiring funnels, Hibob on benefits administration — while Gloat claims the retention-and-mobility layer.
- For customers like Unilever and PayPal, every dollar routed through an internal marketplace is a dollar not spent on external sourcing and agency fees, pressuring recruiting vendors adjacent to their stacks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — and Gloat's later $57M and $90M rounds suggest it did — large employers restructure around internal talent marketplaces as core infrastructure, shifting HR software spending from acquisition tools toward workforce-matching platforms.
- Enterprise AI adoption keeps flowing through Israel-founded startups selling into global incumbents, reinforcing the country's role as a supplier of applied-AI layers for Fortune 500 HR and operations.
The trend: Enterprise HR budgets are migrating from external-recruiting tools toward AI-driven internal talent marketplaces, with venture funding pacing the category's buildout.