Dex raises £4m seed to expand AI-powered hiring and enter US market
This article covers Dex, an AI startup, which has raised £4m in a seed funding round led by Notion Capital with participation from a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures 2100 and angel investors. The funding will be used to expand its hiring product and support a US expansion targeting engineers, hiring teams and tech startups in New York and San Francisco.
Dex, an AI startup based in London, has raised £4 million in a seed funding round led by Notion Capital, with participation from a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures 2100 and angel investors from OpenAI and other organisations. The round follows a $3.1 million pre-seed in 2025 and brings total funding to $8.4 million; Dex says the new capital will be used to expand its hiring product and enter the US market, targeting New York and San Francisco.
Why it matters
Hiring remains costly and inefficient. The announcement highlights the scale of the problem — citing nearly $1 trillion in annual agency fees and an industry valuation referenced at about $856 billion — and positions Dex as an attempt to shift recruitment away from traditional agency-driven models. For founders and talent leaders watching the AI hiring space, the round is another signal that investors are backing technology designed to improve candidate experience and reduce hiring friction.
Inside the product
Dex describes itself as a talent agent for candidates. The platform holds conversations with users to capture experience, motivations, ambitions and values, then matches them with roles. It also supports candidates with opportunity research, compensation benchmarking and interview prep, while collecting hiring-team insights to enable direct introductions when there is mutual fit.
Traction figures in the release: more than 15,000 engineers have signed up and over 50 technology businesses are using the service. Dex says it monetised the product in late 2025 and scaled from zero to an annualised run rate of $1.8 million. The company is headquartered in London and plans a US expansion focused on New York and San Francisco.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Notion Capital and included a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures 2100 and angel investors from OpenAI and other organisations. Participation from both UK‑based and US investors underlines cross‑Atlantic interest in tooling for hiring and talent marketplaces. The funding follows a $3.1 million pre‑seed round in 2025, taking Dex’s total financing to $8.4 million.
In the announcement, Kamil Mieczakowski, Partner at Notion Capital, said:
The inner workings of the $856B recruitment industry have barely changed in decades. Despite the proliferation of software the cost to hire continues to go up while both candidates and the hiring managers are provided with an inferior experience that optimises for all the wrong things. In an ocean of products prioritising employers, Dex acts as a partner of the candidate, creating trust in a way that today's recruiters rarely can. Dex is already working with some of the most exciting tech companies in Europe and US, providing them with top quality technical talent and we're very excited to be supporting them on this next chapter of their journey.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Paddy Lambros, Founder & CEO at Dex, said:
Traditional recruitment is often unsuccessful and, so far, AI hasn’t helped much. We’re currently seeing an AI ‘arms race’ to the bottom, with companies being flooded by AI-generated applications, while individuals are often subjected to inhumane – and unethical – screening. Dex offers an alternative. We believe that meaningful work matters, and people find fulfilment if they care about what they do. Too many people are working in jobs they don’t like, doing work they don’t care about, on problems that don’t matter. This is why it is important to gain a full picture of the individual, and the job openings, so Dex can find the right fit for them.
Lambros’ framing highlights two selling points: candidate‑led matching and richer context on both people and roles. Those features are pitched as a corrective to high volumes of low‑quality applications and automated screening that can miss fit signals.
The bigger picture
The market for recruitment technology is crowded but fragmented. Solutions that promise to improve candidate experience and reduce agency spend are attracting attention from investors; participation by a16z Speedrun and angels associated with OpenAI suggests continued appetite from AI investors for companies applying large‑scale models to hiring problems. For employers, the question will be whether AI can deliver higher quality matches without creating new biases or gaming the system.
This funding round also illustrates London’s continuing role as a hub for AI startups with transatlantic ambitions. As Dex prepares for US expansion, the company joins a wave of UK AI firms looking to scale overseas while the region develops its own regulatory and investment frameworks for applied AI.
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