AI Startup Ethos Raises $22.75M to Transform Expert Hiring
21Ethos, a London-based AI company focused on expert matching, has announced a $22.75 million Series A funding round. The company was founded by alumni from Google DeepMind and McKinsey. This investment comes at a time when AI’s impact on the hiring process is becoming more complex and challenging for employers. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from General Catalyst, XTX, and Evantic.
Addressing AI’s Role in the Hiring Market
Generative AI has revolutionized how candidates present themselves. Over the past 30 months, it has become easier for job seekers to craft convincing CVs, cover letters, and portfolios using AI tools. But this has made it harder for recruiters to identify genuine expertise. While candidates have more frictionless ways to showcase their skills, traditional recruiting tools haven’t kept pace. This has led to a hiring landscape where the most affordable inputs—candidates’ AI-enhanced profiles—scale quickly, while recruiters’ time remains limited and overwhelmed.
Ethos aims to fix this problem by leveraging AI to better match experts with opportunities. The company argues that current expert networks, which rely on human-curated lists of consultants and specialists, are too slow and static. Instead, Ethos uses AI to build detailed profiles of experts by conducting interviews and analyzing their work, such as papers, code, and conference talks. This approach creates dynamic, rich profiles that can be matched automatically to various projects and roles.
How Ethos Works and Its Potential Impact
The company’s platform combines two main features. First, an AI-powered voice agent interviews each expert to understand their knowledge and experience beyond what a static resume can show. Second, Ethos’s AI ingests existing work like academic papers, code repositories, podcasts, and articles to deepen its understanding of each expert’s skills. The result is a detailed profile that can be matched against incoming opportunities from clients.
Ethos’s platform caters to a wide range of needs. It connects experts with consulting projects, expert calls, market research, data labeling, and even full-time roles. The company has positioned itself as a resource for AI labs and other organizations needing verified domain-specific data. The platform’s reach is growing rapidly, with over 5,000 experts joining weekly across fields such as finance, law, healthcare, and skilled trades. The goal is to create a broad, verified talent pool that can be matched efficiently and accurately.
Experts on Ethos earn an average of £4,500 per month, with top earners making over £7,000. Since January, the number of earning experts has increased six-fold. Rates for expert calls on the platform range from $105 to $225 per hour, which is higher than typical AI training roles. These figures suggest the platform is attracting high-quality professionals and generating significant income for them. Ethos believes its growth will continue as demand for verified expertise expands across industries and use cases.
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