HR Tech Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) in the San Francisco Bay Area 2026

Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams. Built for the way the world works today, Deel combines HRIS, payroll, compliance, benefits, performance, and equipment management into one seamless platform. With AI-powered tools and a fully owned payroll infrastructure, Deel supports every worker type in 120+ countries—helping businesses scale smarter, faster, and more compliantly. Discover how Deel makes global work simple at deel.com.

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system. Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds. Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.2B from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks and Bedrock.

Checkr builds people infrastructure for the future of work. And we believe everyone should have a fair chance to work. That's why we've designed a faster—and fairer—way to screen job seekers. For more information on our mission and products, visit https://checkr.com.

Saffron is building a platform to test how well candidates can use coding agents. The way engineers write code has fundamentally changed, but the way companies evaluate them hasn't. Saffron gives hiring teams full visibility into how candidates use AI agents to build, debug, and ship real features on an actual codebase. Saffron was founded by Robert Chondro (formerly MIT and Jane Street), Jerry Yao (Stanford and Jane Street), and Kazuma Choji (Harvey Mudd, published in NeurIPS and ICML), and is backed by Y Combinator (P26) and Afore Capital.

HireGlide is an AI-native recruiting agency. We use software and agents to find companies better people faster.

Tinder for Jobs. Swipe right, AI applies on your behalf.

Shor is a new Employer-of-Record built from the ground up with AI agents and stablecoins. We enable remote teams to hire and pay global employees at a fraction of the cost. The process is fast, simple, and fully compliant. Today, global payroll is broken. Payments take days, cost 5–10% in fees, and force companies to navigate complex banking, tax, and labor regulations. Platforms like Deel and Rippling solved this for large enterprises but remain too expensive and cumbersome for the millions of startups and growing remote teams scaling globally. Shor fixes this by combining autonomous AI agents with stablecoin-based settlement. Our agents handle contracts, worker classification, compliance, and payroll automatically in a simple, messaging-first experience. Payments can settle in seconds rather than weeks at a fraction of the cost of legacy providers. We are making global payroll fast, affordable, and accessible for the millions of companies left out by legacy platforms.

Gale is an immigration tech platform that makes immigration simple for US companies. We've simplified the visa application process, streamlined compliance, and can integrate with HR systems - saving teams time, money and headaches. Through automation, we enable the independent attorneys we coordinate with to maintain quality whilst being more efficient.

Superunit deploys AI voice and email agents to complete employment verifications for background check companies—faster, cheaper, and more compliant than internal teams or outsourced call centers. Our agents call and email employers, collect verification data, and log every interaction for audit and compliance. Customers are replacing manual workflows with Superunit to scale without adding headcount or compromising quality. We work with background screeners and banks to process thousands of verifications per month.

Alex is an agentic AI recruiter for the future of hiring. Companies use us to get the best hiring signal on their applicant pool and hire in a fraction of the time. Our AI recruiter has a live conversation over a video call with each of your candidates based on the interview questions you choose or that are recommended based on the job description. During the interview, our AI asks personalized follow-up questions in real-time based on the candidate's responses. Our AI recruiter can be customized to your roles in minutes and has already conducted thousands of interviews across engineering, IT, retail, hospitality, and more.

AI-powered recruiting and HR platform. Find and hire the best pre-vetted global software talent and simplify onboarding, payroll, and compliance.

Serra is an AI recruiter that fully automates candidate sourcing and outreach, finding ideal talent from LinkedIn, GitHub, Crunchbase, and your ATS. Companies hiring Serra skip sourcing entirely and simply get qualified interviews on their calendar.

Generic payroll providers weren't built for construction - Hammr is. Our modern tools simplify construction payroll, HR and operations. We help construction companies boost profits, not paperwork.

Source Proprietary Deals Through Your Network. Verata combines relationship intelligence with private company data to help PE firms find targets, identify warm paths, and get to companies before they hit the market. We also empower firms to leverage their extended network for back-channeling and due diligence on prospective investment targets.

Juicebox is on a mission to help teams win the talent war. In the age of AI, human ingenuity is the ultimate scarce resource. Recruiting is a zero-sum game where you either compete or lose. Teams at Ramp, Perplexity, and leading AI labs use Juicebox to power their hiring, alongside 3,000+ customers from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies. We’ve crossed $10M in ARR with 20%+ monthly growth, powering thousands of searches every day and making Juicebox one of the fastest-growing AI SaaS companies in the world. Juicebox has raised $36M in funding, including a $30M Series A led by Sequoia Capital. Additional investors in Juicebox include Coatue, NFDG, Lux Capital, Y Combinator, and BOND Capital.

Peoplebox.ai is an AI-native talent platform used by 500+ companies to hire, manage, and grow their people. At the center is Nova, the world’s most human-like AI teammate, for all talent conversations. Nova runs two-way voice/video pre-screen calls, first-round interviews (with coding round and advance proctoring), check-ins, and assessments, all with your company’s context built in. The talent management platform brings together OKRs/goals, performance reviews, career growth, calibration, and compensation into one unified system, helping companies align, assess, and develop talent faster.

The complete way to communicate compensation, starting with our interactive offer letters.

ModernLoop helps every company automate and streamline recruiting operations to deliver the best candidate experience. In 2022, the Department of Labor estimates there is a global talent shortage of 40 million workers, and that number is expected to grow to over 85 million by 2030. In order for companies to win the war for talent, they need to provide a best-in-class candidate experience to recruit top talent, and our product aims at doing just that! Our founders Lydia Han (CEO) and Chris Triolo (CTO) both founded ModernLoop in December of 2020 after they saw the challenges recruiting teams had when it came to coordinating hundreds of interviews across various teams, all while making sure both hiring managers and candidates had the best experience possible. After spending 15+ combined years at companies like Facebook, Slack, Brex and Salesforce, they understood what it took to enable talent teams do their best work, and are building a product to scale alongside them as they grow. We created ModernLoop to serve companies of all sizes in every industry to help Talent teams interview candidates quicker, easier, and enhance productivity of teams as they continue their search for top talent!

Gigs is the leader in embedded connectivity, powering global mobile infrastructure for some of the world’s largest enterprises. By bridging the gap between telecom carriers and modern digital platforms, Gigs enables connectivity for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Gigs is backed by Ribbit Capital, Google’s Gradient Ventures, and Y Combinator. Learn more about what we do at www.gigs.com.

Pave allows you to make smarter comp decisions and eliminate spreadsheets, powered by real-time integrations with your HRIS, ATS, and Cap Table.

Finch is the API to access payroll and HR systems. We allow admins to connect their company in a compliant and secure manner to applications. Finch integrates across providers enabling developers to access a previously closed system and are at the source of truth for employee data and money flow. Our API powers use cases across lending, insurance, benefits, FP&A, and HR applications.

Nestor is a Skills-based talent management platform that helps HR and managers identify, activate, and strategically deploy skills in their organization to drive peak performance, innovation, and growth. With a market library of over 20,000 skills enhanced by Nestor’s AI skills suggestions, you gain unprecedented visibility into your people’s capabilities and dynamic mapping of their skills. Our leading platform combines the tools, insights, and decision-making support you need to understand people's strengths and skill gaps and effectively guide them with personalized upskilling and reskilling initiatives aligned with career goals and company business priorities. Nestor’s Talent and Opportunity Marketplace helps connect talent with gigs, projects, or new open roles based on AI smart-matching, ensuring people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time. Using the capabilities of the Nestor platform, HR and business leaders can benefit from: - Skills Mapping - Increased Performance - Upskilling & Reskilling - Talent Deployment - Growth & Retention - Internal Hiring - Succession Planning - Workforce Agility - Optimized learning ROI - Emerging Skills Nestor is trusted by HR and people leaders in mid-to-large enterprises, including F500 companies, across the US, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. Nestor is rated the #1st Easiest to Use Skills Management Software on G2. Request a demo here: https://nestorup.com/demo.

Tall Poppy is building tools and services to make personal digital safety accessible to everyone. Founded in 2018, we work both proactively to help prevent harassment from escalating, and also provide expert incident response services when people come under attack.

tEQuitable helps companies get in front of and prevent harassment. We are an independent, confidential platform to address issues of bias, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace. For employees, we provide a sounding board they can consult without fear of retribution on issues ranging from subtle, insidious slights and invalidations to overt discrimination and harassment. For companies, we provide data and insights to identify systemic issues, track behavioral trends, and develop actionable recommendations. tEQuitable is using technology to make workplaces more equitable.

Out-of-pocket healthcare costs are skyrocketing and every day, people all across America are forced to make difficult decisions about their health. Lively is the benefits solutions provider that gets it right. We designed our solutions to take the guesswork out of managing benefits. And our innovative features are built to simplify benefits administration and evolve with your business. Managing wellness and wealth takes more than a series of transactions. By combining robust features with unparalleled service, we make benefits administration effortless, even when time and energy are limited. Experience benefits administration as it should be with Lively. Go to www.livelyme.com to learn about how HSAs other modern employee benefits can help you and your team.

Plane is an all-in-one people platform for fast-growing teams. We build easy-to-use payroll and compliance tools that help companies go global from day one.

Lattice is people success software that empowers leaders to build engaged and high- performing teams, inspire winning cultures, and make strategic, data-driven business decisions. Our software helps nearly 4,000 companies globally align employees to the most critical objectives, measure and reward performance, and create an effective feedback loop between employees and managers.

Human Interest is on a mission to ensure that people in all lines of work have access to retirement benefits. Nearly half of all working Americans are not saving enough for their future. Too often it’s because they are employed by a company that doesn’t offer a retirement plan. Human Interest is changing that by making it affordable and accessible for small and medium-sized businesses to offer employees a path to financial independence through retirement savings. We’re a high-growth tech company changing the retirement industry. We’ve raised $500M and are backed by leading investors. Most recently, by funding from BlackRock as well as many other top investors: TPG (The Rise Fund) with SoftBank led our Series D, Glynn Capital, NewView Capital, USVP, Wing, Uncork, and others.

Fountain’s all-in-one high volume hiring platform empowers the world’s leading enterprises to find the right people through smart, fast, and seamless recruiting. Candidates can apply anytime, anywhere in minutes, right from their phone. Automated and customizable processes streamline the candidate experience and save time for recruitment teams so they can scale with growing hiring needs. Advanced analytics provide end-to-end process visibility so managers can make swift, data-driven decisions. Throughout the candidate journey, the openly integrated platform enables companies to find, qualify and convert more applicants. Fountain’s global customers hire over 1.2 million workers annually in 78 countries.

Platzi cracked online education. It teaches courses on design, marketing and programming with a 70% completion rate, to over one million students worldwide. The classes include real-time collaboration among students and industry leaders as teachers. It aims to be the professional home for lifelong learning of advanced skills.

Central kills back-office work for startups. While HR/payroll platforms give you software to figure it out, Central actually does all the work using AI agents and human experts: payroll, benefits, compliance, accounting, taxes, and more. That's 10+ hours back every month. Thousands of founders trust Central. Learn more and start for free at centralhq.com

Eden provides workplace software for modern companies. Our suite includes tools such as Desk Booking, Room Scheduling, Visitor Management, and more.

Zenefits was founded to take the administrative heartache out of getting healthcare. In the five years since, Zenefits'​ consumer-grade technology has tackled one of the economy's gnarliest people problems: delivering easy access to health insurance. Today, this is the foundation of our People Platform which brings everything HR -- benefits, payroll, onboarding and talent management -- into one single app. And we're just getting started. Our team is creating a modern People Platform that empowers employees by equipping them with the tools they need to be independent, mobile, and fully in control. The Zenefits People Platform is where HR comes to life. Learn more at www.zenefits.com

Fond is a global SaaS platform that seamlessly consolidates employee rewards and recognition processes into one easy-to-use solution. With Fond, employees and managers can recognize each other, redeem rewards, access exclusive corporate discounts, and measure success so HR departments spend less time managing programs and more time driving results.