Ando Raises $4M in Seed Funding Led by Slow Ventures

London-based Kinfolk has raised a $7.2M seed round, led by AlbionVC , with participation from PROfounders Capital and existing investors Ascension and Emerge. The round also includes angel backing from Tony Jamous, Founder & Executive Chairman of OysterHR. 💰 Total funding now stands at $8.5M. As HR and People Ops teams face shrinking headcounts and rising complexity, too much time is still lost to manual admin, legacy ticketing tools, and limited chatbots. Kinfolk is tackling this with a bold new Workforce Operations category. Their AI-native platform combines: 🤖 Agentic AI in Slack & Microsoft Teams 🔄 End-to-end request and lifecycle automation 📊 Analytics for people programs ⚙️ Autonomous execution — not just ticket management As CEO Jeet Mukerji puts it, Kinfolk is shifting HR from manual coordination to autonomous execution, enabling teams to scale operations and focus on strategic work that drives growth. With fresh capital, Kinfolk plans to: Accelerate agentic AI development Expand enterprise readiness Move beyond HR into payroll & IT workflows Scale go-to-market to meet rising demand A strong signal that AI-native operating systems for People teams are becoming essential, not optional. #FundingNews #HRTech #FutureOfWork #AgenticAI #PeopleOperations #StartupEcosystem #LondonStartups #AITechSupports #AITech #AITechnology #CEO #CTO 

Ando, a San Francisco, CA-based company building AI infrastructure for the global hourly workforce, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Blitzscaling Ventures, Zero Capital, Monochrome, Gaingels, Mana Ventures, Fireroad, and additional investors. The company intends to use the funds to expand its AI platform and scale deployments with enterprise customers. Led by Paul Wellons, Founder and CEO, Ando is building AI infrastructure for the global hourly workforce, helping businesses reduce turnover, eliminate labor waste, and give workers schedules they can depend on. The company is purpose-built for the hourly W2 workforce, supporting employees and the managers who schedule them.

Today, we're announcing Comp's R$100 million Series A, led by Keith Rabois at Khosla Ventures, their first-ever investment in Brazil. Joining Khosla are our insiders KASZEK and Canary doubling down, as well as new investors Abstract Ventures and Endeavor Scale-Up Ventures. From day one, we've been building around two core convictions: 1/ People are the most important thing in any business 2/ The way companies manage people (aka "traditional HR") doesn't work anymore We're not another HR software tool. We're not a consulting firm. We're something new entirely: an AI-Native HR Function. We embed forward-deployed HR experts and engineers directly inside our customers’ organizations, building custom policies, processes, and AI tools that make the People function both more strategic and more efficient. Think of us as your superpowered HR teammate -- supporting everything from the most complex organizational decisions to the most operational day-to-day work. We are deeply grateful to our early customers for their trust in us to challenge the status quo in compensation.. and we are thrilled to already be supporting innovative companies across all their HR work. We are growing extremely quickly and hiring ambitious builders to reinvent HR from first principles. If you want to help define a category and build at the frontier of application-layer AI, send me a message. We were born in Brazil, but we are building for the world.

Venture funding isn't success of course, but it's nearly impossible to win big markets without it. Unlike the AI hype, Ando is very, very real. And unlike others, Ando is here to make lives genuinely better for everyone. (*) #proudinvestor #micdrop #oversubscribed Big thx to Bradford Oberwager and James Kairos, Ben Metcalfe, Andy Mutz, Joseph Chittenden-Veal, Scott Sanders, Massy Ghausi, John Lyman, Thomas Wesley, John Holder… and of course Phoenix Toews and Paul Wellons (to name a few) — (*) Yeah yeah, some pencil-pusher will use AI to over-optimize profits over people, but as American Airlines is learning the hard way (WSJ: https://lnkd.in/ePz_QNzt ), net of competition, "people businesses" don't work that way. You HAVE to care for people or you lose. Ando plays a beautiful collaborative role in that dialogue, helping profit-focused management more clearly see the effects of a motivated labor force. That's why I'm truly #proudinvestor --- Posts co-authored with my LinkedIn secret weapon Dennis Buckley

Monochrome Capital is proud to be investing alongside Slow Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures, and Jim Messina in Ando - a significant increase in our stake following the initial pre-seed check we wrote to help get the business off the ground in 2024. I’ve spent a significant portion of my career in the "pre-AI" era of logistics digitization - from the early days of Uber to working closely with Paul Wellons at Jyve. While we solved massive problems back then, the frontline workforce was often left behind by the technology meant to manage them. Having seen Paul’s leadership firsthand at Jyve, we knew early on that he was the right person to tackle the 'last broken supply chain': labor. What is Ando? They are building the world’s first AI infrastructure for the global hourly workforce. By using high-accuracy demand forecasting and intelligent staffing tools, they match the right people to the right shifts at the right time - turning a chaotic scheduling process into a precise, stable system. As our industry moves toward an AI-driven future, I am especially focused on what happens to blue-collar and hourly workers. I’ve always believed a "win/win" is possible where optimization for the employer also means better, more predictable lives for the workers. Paul is charting that course responsibly, and I believe Ando will lead to better outcomes for everyone involved than a world without it. Excited to continue our partnership with this additional financing! #FutureOfWork #AI #Logistics #HourlyWorkforce #ResponsibleAI #VentureCapital

Kinfolk, a London, UK-based provider of an #AI-driven workforce operations platform, has raised $7M in Seed funding. 🚀 The round was led by AlbionVC, with participation from PROfounders Capital, Ascension, Emerge, and angel investors including Tony Jamous (Founder of OysterHR) and Saurav Chopra (Founder of 5Mins). Led by Co-founder and CEO Jeet Mukerji, Kinfolk is building an AI orchestration layer that automates manual People Operations workflows directly within Slack. Its autonomous AI agents can handle tasks such as drafting employment letters, updating HRIS records, and managing leave requests—removing the need for traditional HR ticketing systems. The platform already manages up to 70% of Tier 0–1 employee requests without human intervention, helping HR teams reclaim around 45 days of administrative time per year. The new funding will support expansion of Kinfolk’s agentic AI capabilities and enterprise infrastructure. #Funding #SeedFunding #AI #HRTech #FutureOfWork #StartupFunding #ArtificialIntelligence #WorkforceAutomation #TechStartups #Innovation 🚀 #AITechSupports #Fundraising #AITech #AITechnology #CEO #CTO 

London-based Kinfolk has raised a $7 million Seed round led by AlbionVC, with participation from PROfounders Capital, Ascension, Emerge, and angel investors including Tony Jamous and Saurav Chopra. Founded by Jeet Mukerji and Kim Hellbom, the company is building a Workforce Operations platform that uses AI agents inside Slack and Microsoft Teams to automate HR tasks. The system is designed to execute workflows autonomously, such as updating HRIS records and managing employee lifecycle changes, moving beyond simple information retrieval. More at: https://lnkd.in/gJ42f7DK #HRTech #AI #Funding #WorkforceOperations #FutureOfWork

Decagon Just Raised $250M And Is Giving Employees A Rare Payday. In the world of AI startups, where equity-heavy comp plans meet IPO delays, employee tender offers are becoming a strategic superpower. Decagon’s $250M Series D, which values the company at $4.5B, isn’t just about more funding. It’s about retention and focus. Over 300 employees can now sell part of their vested equity during a new liquidity event—not by issuing new shares, but by letting Series D investors (like Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, and Index) participate in a secondary transaction. Why does this matter? Because it’s becoming clear that structured liquidity isn’t just a "nice-to-have" in AI—it's table stakes. Teams need to stay motivated for the long haul as companies like Decagon build value without the immediate payoff of an IPO. Programs like this balance stability with reward, enabling startups to keep engineers and PMs focused on shipping great products instead of worrying about financial timelines. For the industry, this trend sparks big questions: Will secondary liquidity events become the de facto model for scaling AI companies? And how do you weigh the risk of dilution against keeping top talent and morale intact? Does your company have a strategy for equity liquidity, or is this the kind of trend only unicorns can afford to play with? Follow here for more AI and startup insights. #AIStartups #TalentRetention #EquityCompensation #TechInnovation #LeadershipInTech

📣 Kinfolk raises a £5m seed round led by AlbionVC to shift manual HR workflows with agentic AI 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 ⤵️ ⚙️ HR 📈 Seed 💰 £5m 🤝 AlbionVC; PROfounders Capital; Ascension Ventures; Emerge VC; Angels 🧑 Jeet Mukerji; Kim Hellbom 🌎 London, United Kingdom

I killed my last startup. Not because it failed, because I stopped showing up. Before Differo, there was Next HR. An AI-powered tool for hiring agencies. The idea was solid: upload 200 CVs, get the top 10 candidates in seconds instead of hours. Mateusz Staniaszek and I built it. We made a few offers. We never found a single client. Not because the product was bad. Not because the market wasn't there. Because we didn't believe in it enough to push through the hard part. We gave up too early. Not with a dramatic decision - just by showing up less, until we stopped. Now I'm building Differo. Same tools. Different thing. I'll tell you what changed tomorrow. #BuildInPublic #FounderLife #Startup #AI