Spott Raises €18.3M for Recruitment AI

Spott has raised a sizeable Series A around the idea that recruitment agencies need a new core system built for AI rather than another assistant layered onto older software.

What happened

The Belgian startup raised €18.3 million ($21 million) in Series A funding, led by Balderton Capital with participation from Base10 Partners, Y Combinator and Fortino.

Spott combines applicant tracking, customer relationship management and communication tools in one platform aimed specifically at recruitment agencies.

The company plans to expand into the US and Asia-Pacific.

Why it matters

Recruitment firms often operate across several disconnected systems: candidate databases, CRM platforms, email, sourcing tools and scheduling software.

That fragmentation makes automation difficult because an AI agent needs context from multiple places before it can take useful action.

By rebuilding the underlying workflow around one data model, Spott is trying to make AI-native automation part of the core operating system rather than a bolt-on feature.

The bigger picture

Vertical AI is increasingly becoming a software replacement cycle. Startups are not only adding copilots to established categories; they are using AI as a reason for customers to reconsider the entire system of record. Recruitment is particularly exposed because much of the work involves repetitive information handling, communication and matching tasks that agents can increasingly automate.