Tezi, an early stage startup, is developing an AI agent to revolutionize the hiring process for HR teams. With the goal of finding the perfect candidates for job openings, Tezi’s bot will sift through resumes, schedule interviews, and send out emails to potential candidates. The company recently announced a $9 million seed funding round to support the development of its product.
While automated resume screening has been used in HR for some time, Tezi saw an opportunity to leverage the power of large language models (LLMs) to create a more sophisticated recruiting tool. CEO and co-founder Raghavendra Prabhu believes that combining reasoning and natural language processing can create something truly innovative in this space.
Co-founder and COO Jason James emphasizes that existing tools fall short, as they only rank resumes without providing an end-to-end workflow. Tezi aims to automate the entire hiring process, from initial screening to interview scheduling. While human involvement is still necessary at this stage, the founders hope that future advancements in AI models will enable full automation.
The quality of the prompts and job descriptions plays a crucial role in determining the pool of candidates that emerge from a job search. Tezi acknowledges the potential for bias in automation and is actively working to mitigate it. They evaluate inputs from hiring managers objectively and aim to minimize bias on their end. While they cannot control the biases that may exist in the input data, they strive to ensure their algorithms do not introduce any additional bias.
Tezi has trained its models on 250 million licensed profiles from data providers and has collaborated with OpenAI and Anthropic models. This training allows them to match candidates based on skills and criteria set by hiring managers. The company, which launched earlier this year, is currently working with 15-20 design customers to refine its product. They plan to reach a wider beta distribution later this year.
The $9 million seed funding was led by 8VC and Audacious Ventures, with participation from Liquid 2, Afore, Prime Set, South Park Commons, and industry angels. This investment will enable Tezi to further develop its AI agent and accelerate its journey towards a fully available product.
