Scale Venture Partners

$2 trillion in software market cap wiped out in 30 days. SaaS is being eaten alive by AI agents - and our investor just told our entire company we're one of the few positioned to win what comes next. Public SaaS growth rates have hit record lows. Median growth fell to ~12% by end of 2025. In early 2026, $2 trillion in software market cap disappeared in 30 days as AI agents began replacing entire product categories. Jeremy Kaufmann from Scale Venture Partners broke it down for our team: SaaS ate all of software by 2022-2023. No new markets left. Growth stalled. But then AI changed the game - not by improving software, but by eating human work itself. The case study everyone's watching is Intercom. They pivoted to AI agents, re-accelerated from ~10% to 25% YoY growth, and their Fin agent alone is approaching $100M in ARR. Jeremy says only a handful of SaaS companies in history pulled off this transition. He believes Spot AI is one of them. The numbers: → Agent ARR grew 1,000% in a single year → Overall business growth accelerated from 58% to 70% YoY → Burn multiple improved by 60% (getting efficient fast) → 1,000+ customers across manufacturing, retail, healthcare, education → More new video indexed daily than YouTube But here's the real lesson: almost every AI agent today is digital - automating text, tickets, and code. We're building AI agents for the physical world. Cameras that see, reason, and act on factory floors, in warehouses, and at storefronts. Hardware-enabled SaaS is the next frontier of vertical AI. It's harder to build. It's also harder to replicate. And that's exactly why it works. Huge thanks to Jeremy Kaufman and Scale Venture Partners for the partnership, the push, and the conviction. When your investor compares your trajectory to one of the only SaaS-to-AI success stories in history - you don't slow down.

By far the biggest technology update in the history of service agents. And a significant development for AI applications and AI at large. Today we're sharing news about Apex, the world's first customer service model that beats all known models at this task.

When we first met Paraform, four of us from the Scale team were on the call. Halfway through, I sent a side text to our team on the call: "I really like this company. The founders seem really sharp". Almost immediately, the group chat came alive. While John and Jeff were still walking us through the business, we were all texting versions of: yep, same reaction. What stuck with me wasn’t just that they were smart. It was how clearly they saw the business: what was working, what wasn’t, where they still had questions, and what they wanted to test next. That kind of clarity is hard to fake. It usually comes from actually living inside the problem, and that was the signal for us. Excited that we at Scale are partnering with John Kim, Jeffrey Li, and the Paraform team!

We raised $65M to build the Agentic Hiring Platform that makes hiring exceptional talent as easy as pressing a button. AI is accelerating faster than anyone imagined. Knowledge work will never be the same. As intelligence, data, and software commoditize, one thing becomes exponentially more valuable: human ingenuity. Yet finding great people remains extremely difficult. Despite decades of so-called "innovation" - job boards, sourcing tools, LinkedIn, AI interviews and outreach - hiring is still inefficient, fragmented, and noisy. The core problems have never been solved: information asymmetry, matching, trust, and workflow fragmentation. That’s where Paraform comes in. Our first product is our AI-powered recruiter marketplace, where expert recruiters and custom AI agents work together to fill your critical roles faster and better than ever. To date, we have helped 1,000+ customers like Palantir, Rippling, Decagon, Abridge, Cognition, Owner, and Basis hire world-class talent and significantly accelerate the trajectory of their businesses. Paraform has also paid out $50M+ to recruiters on our platform. We believe recruiters are becoming the sports agents of the AI era, and their work will only become more valuable over time. We aim to pay out $1B+ over the coming years to our recruiters for the irreplaceable work they do. We’re now expanding beyond tech into new industries. In legal alone, 30+ law firms - from the AmLaw 100 to regional boutiques - are using Paraform to hire litigation attorneys, partners, paralegals, and more. Starting with our recruiter marketplace, we enter through the hardest problem in hiring - the critical roles no one else can fill. With every search, interview, and hire, we learn what great looks like for each company. That data compounds - forming the foundation for what we're building towards: an All-in-one Agentic Hiring Platform where customers never leave. It fills every role and covers the entire recruiting workflow, powered by the most accurate hiring intelligence. What's even more exciting is we're not building this just for tech companies in the US, but for every role, every industry, everywhere in the world. Our Series B was led by Rory O'Driscoll at Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Felicis, A*, and Liquid 2 Ventures. We’re thrilled to have Rory along on our journey as he brings valuable experience of 30+ years in venture investing and multiple IPOs - DocuSign, Bill.com, Box and more. A massive thank you as well to the early believers who doubled/tripled down on Paraform - Peter Deng, Felicis, Bennett Siegel, A*, Matthew Mulvey, Liquid 2, and our incredible angels. To my co-founder Jeffrey and the entire Paraform team - we know exactly where we're headed and what this becomes. This is just the beginning. We’re rapidly hiring across every team. Join us to do your life’s work and build the most mission-driven and valuable company in the world. Read more about the fundraise below.