SeekOut, a people aggregator, announced a $115 million funding round. Also announcing rounds were EduMe and Career Karma. Separately, the US Supreme Court declines to review preliminary injunction in gig economy trademark case.
SeekOut
SeekOut today announced a $115 million series C funding round led by Tiger Global Management. The round values the Seattle-based company at more than $1.2 billion. SeekOut describes itself as an artificial intelligence-powered talent search engine. SIA would classify the company as a sourcing automation tool or, more specifically, a people aggregator.
SeekOut noted it has doubled its customer count to more than 1,000 enterprises over the past year.
The company provides companies with talent pools, diversity strategy and sourcing, recruiting solutions and more.
“With this financing round, we’ll be investing deeply in innovations that extend our leadership position in talent acquisition, and power new solutions for internal mobility, employee retention, career pathing, and learning and development,” co-founder and CEO Anoop Gupta said.
SeekOut had announced a $65 million Series B round last March.
EduMe
EduMe, a London-based deskless training platform, announced a $20 million series B funding round led by Prosus with participation from Workday Ventures, an arm of Workday Inc.
EduMe reported brands such as Gopuff, Gorillas and Uber have partnered with it to provide training to mobile or frontline workers.
Jacob Waern, CEO and founder of EduMe, noted 80% of the global workforce is deskless but the vast majority don’t have the training they need to be successful. His company aims to help these workers, who include delivery drivers, retail, hospitality and healthcare workers.
The company plans to use the funding to invest in innovation and development and expand in its core US market and globally.
In addition to London, EduMe has California offices in Palo Alto and Santa Monica.
Career Karma
Career Karma announced a $40 million series B funding round. TechCrunch reported the company has been in the business of assisting workers in finding coding bootcamps but is not expanding beyond that model to work with employers.
AfroTech reported the company launched in 2018 and has $52 million in funding overall.
Career Karma founder and CEO Ruben Harris told AfroTech no one company dominates the reskilling space but whichever player aggregates demand will become the leader in the $2.2 trillion post-secondary market.
Trademark lawsuit
The US Supreme Court on Jan. 11 denied a petition to review Freelancer.com’s request for a preliminary injunction in its trademark lawsuit against Upwork Inc. Bloomberg Law reported the decision will allow Upwork to continue using “freelancer” as a descriptive term while Freelancer.com’s underlying case goes through court.
Last June, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had rejected the preliminary injunction as well, upholding a ruling by the district court.
Freelancer.com’s lawsuit argues that Upwork’s mobile app for freelancers infringes on Freelancer.com’s trademark because the app’s icon lists the word “Freelancer” under the “Up” logo, according to court records. The lawsuit also alleges that one to two app notifications allegedly incorporate the “Freelancer” mark.
The civil case is being heard in the US District Court California Northern District. Case No. is 3:20-cv-06132-SI.