Gloat Nets $90M to Grow Workforce Agility Platform
In a cooling tech investors' market, Gloat remains a hot commodity. The talent marketplace and workforce agility specialist has secured a $90 million Series D funding investment, the company announced on June 28.
Founded in 2015, the New York City-based company's mission is to help companies create a more agile workforce by creating an internal talent marketplace that matches employees with job opportunities. Gloat last raised money in June 2021 when it announced a $57 million Series C investment. The latest round brings the company's total funding to $192 million, according to Crunchbase.
The round was led by Generation Investment Management, a London-based investment firm co-founded by former vice president Al Gore, and was the firm's first investment from its $1.7 billion Sustainable Solutions Fund IV. The fund aims to invest in companies that are creating a sustainable future, in this case to support a product that prioritizes the future of the worker, according to a statement.
“The workplace is undergoing profound change,” said Shalini Rao, partner at Generation Investment Management, in a press release statement. “For many employers it has been a surprise but Gloat saw this coming years ago."
What Is the Talent Marketplace?
Talent marketplaces are AI-enabled software platforms that capture and share data about employees’ skills across the organization, creating and updating skill profiles as employees complete training, participate in projects, and develop new abilities. The idea is to more easily match people to projects and create more robust internal mobility programs.
Gloat competitors include Fuel50, Eightfold.ai, Hitch and 365Talents. Enterprise software giants have also recognized the market opportunity, with Workday and Cornerstone OnDemand both launching talent marketplace features.
When leveraged effectively, managers will be able to find internal candidates for in-demand positions, HR staff can figure out what skills are scarce, and employees can seek out experts and share updates when they’ve added a new skill. The ability to combine marketplace functionality with intelligence on workforce skills at scale has become central to Gloat's approach. The goal is to help employees take control of their own careers and help organizations develop a more agile workforce that can adapt to any market or environment, said Gloat CEO and co-founder Ben Reuveni in a statement.
“From the start, we built Gloat to help employees and businesses adapt to a new world of work,” he said. “The pandemic, the Great Resignation and an increasingly likely economic downturn have accelerated this shift. Now more than ever, companies need to understand their own talent's skills and goals so the right people are connected to the right opportunities and enterprise needs."
Learning Opportunities
Gloat's Plans for the New Funding
According to company figures, Gloat has increased its employee base by 50% in the last year, grown its customer base 2.5-times and increased annual recurring revenue by three-times. Customers include Mastercard, Unilever, Schneider Electric, Seagate, Nestle, Novartis and HSBC.
The new funding will enable Gloat expand its global presence, provide greater access to the Workforce Agility platform, grow its team, and strengthen research and development initiatives, said Dan Norton, Gloat global communications manager, in an emailed statement.
The company added a career agility suite and frontline employee tools in September 2021, and took aim at improving employee experience by launching Opportunity Hub in March 2022. Opportunity Hub allows users of Gloat's talent marketplace to access learning, coaching and well-being programs from third-party providers.
"This investment will enable us to enrich these capabilities and continue to introduce products that drive agility for every business and democratized career opportunity for every individual," North said.
Companies have only begun to tap the potential of talent marketplaces, he added. From tapping into different internal, external, contingent, and alumni talent pools for critical needs, to streamlining development and growth in one platform, talent marketplaces can help meet the custom needs of businesses.
"Just as we’ve seen marketplace models disrupt everything from e-commerce to transportation, the talent marketplace will reform how we manage workforce operations, and ultimately, how we work," Norton said.
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About the Author
Mike Prokopeak is editor in chief at Reworked, the premier publication covering the r/evolution of work, where he leads content development focused on the transformation of the workplace.
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