Every quarter, WorkTech measures the exact number of investments in the HR and recruitment tech sector. Over Q2 2024, the research company sees 64 investments spread across 22 countries. With 31 deals, the United States remains the absolute leader, while the UK is distant second with eight deals. The rest of the contributing countries each reported two or fewer deals.
H1 2024 continues consistent trend
In the first half of 2024, global investments in Work Tech reached $2.22 billion spread across 114 deals. Q1 delivered $1.075 billion spread across 50 deals, while Q2 saw an increase to $1.14 billion spread across 64 deals. “This level of investment is comparable to the years 2018 to 2020,” WorkTech reported. “And represents a welcome return for the global Work Tech market, surpassing H2 2023 results by 43%.
Global Work Tech investment outperformed the broader B2B technology market, bringing similar figures to the pre-2021 investment level.
The Q2 2024 contribution resulted in a 30-quarter average of $1.77 billion. H1 2024 continued the consistent investment growth seen between 2018 and 2020. Notable capital flowed into the Work Tech market in 2021 and 2022, but the capital market tightened in 2022 across all technology categories. Global Work Tech investment outperformed the broader B2B technology market, bringing similar figures to the pre-2021 investment level.
HCM remains the absolute leader
In total, 22 countries saw 64 global Work Tech investments during Q2 2024. The US remains the consistent leader in Work and HR tech investments, with 31 deals in the quarter. The UK reported eight. The rest of the contributing countries each reported two or fewer deals. Since 2020, Human Capital Management (HCM) has consistently been the leading category in both dollar volume and average deal size. In Q1 2024, Talent Acquisition investments were scarce with only $54.1 million worldwide, but in Q2 2024 there was a recovery with $239.2 million invested.
One mega-round
Q2 saw one mega-round with investments of over $100 million, with Rippling’s $200 million Series F round being the largest deal for their SME product. The average deal size across all 64 deals in Q2 was $17.82 million. Seed-round investments had an average value of $3.92 million across 16 deals. In total, deals were tracked across 27 different Work Tech subcategories during Q2. The largest deals in different subcategories: the aforementioned Rippling ($200 million) in Core HR, Factorial ($80 million) in HR Suite/Platform, and Legion Technologies ($50 million) in Workforce Management.
Better quarter for TA tooling
Investment in Talent Acquisition was scarce in Q1 2024 with $54.1 million worldwide. Q2 2024 shows that some momentum has returned to Talent Acquisition with $239.2 million invested. “The Talent Acquisition market is spread across more than 25 subcategories,” WorkTech writes in the report. “Many of these subcategories are seeing incredible conversion traction and acceptance in the field, but most investors do not understand the nuances of the recruitment landscape.”
“Many of these subcategories are seeing incredible conversion traction and acceptance in the field, but most investors do not understand the nuances in the recruitment landscape.”
“As macroeconomic and labour market trends have affected recruitment broadly, most investors have become cautious about TA as a whole,” the study concludes. “This creates a potential opportunity for investors who better understand these nuances, especially those at an early stage.”
