Columbus health IT unicorn Olive AI Inc. has instituted a hiring freeze to conserve capital amid a nationwide downturn throughout the tech industry.
The company has hired 250 since the beginning of the year, and one month ago told Columbus Business First it had no plans to slow down.
Olive still has about 1,300 employees nationwide, a spokesman said Thursday – the same number the company provided at the end of May, so it does not appear to be cutting jobs. About a fifth of its workforce is in Central Ohio; the company adopted a work-from-anywhere model in the pandemic and opens smaller offices in cities where it has enough employees.
"Olive regularly evaluates its hiring needs against the priorities of our business," the company said in a statement in response to questions from Business First. "Like many companies, we've made the difficult but important decision to pause hiring so we can remain well-suited to deliver meaningful impact to our customers and partners."
Plans to renovate the former Anthem office in Worthington as a new headquarters are still going forward, the spokesman said.
An Olive real estate affiliate bought the building, 6700 N. High St., in April. The purchase price was not disclosed in Franklin County Recorder documents, but the affiliate took a $10 million mortgage from the seller.
U.S. tech companies laid off about 17,000 workers in May — the most in a single month in two years, according to tech layoff tracking site Layoffs.fyi. But economists say this is not a harbinger for a troubled job market, because venture-backed tech startups tend to use staffing levels as an expense control more than other industries.
The wave hit Columbus when Swedish payments unicorn Klarna cut some 700 jobs. Columbus is its U.S. headquarters, but the company has not responded to questions about how the job cuts were distributed.
While the layoffs and job cuts are grabbing headlines, overall tech hiring as measured by LinkedIn increased 2% in May over April, and was 18% higher than a year ago, LinkedIn Economist Kory Kantenga said Thursday in a webinar with journalists.
"Rumors of the demise of the tech job market may be greatly exaggerated, as tech hiring remains strong," he said.
Olive was valued at $4 billion after raising $400 million last July – the largest VC round at the highest valuation in Ohio history. Its current headquarters is in downtown Columbus.
Olive has some 950 hospital clients using Olive robotic process automation software for repetitive administrative tasks, increasing productivity of the human workforce – for example checking if Medicaid coverage has changed between scheduling and performing a procedure, or avoiding claims denial for procedures that require an insurer's prior authorization.
The online publication Axios, which this spring cited anonymous sources saying Olive's technology is not achieving what customers were promised, has reported that dozens of key executives have recently left the company.
Business First has not been able to independently verify Axios' reporting on the company's technology. One client, Tufts University Medical Center in Boston, told Business First it has seen about 6:1 returns on its spending with the company.
Regarding departures, the company spokesman told Business First "it's inevitable that people leave and join jobs for a variety of reasons."
"We remain committed to working with our employees on making healthcare more connected and more human," the company said in its statement.
Meanwhile, Circulo Inc., a spinout using Olive's technology for case management to reduce costs and improve outcomes for those covered by Medicaid, is in the process of adding about 1,000 jobs statewide. However, these aren't software engineers but direct service providers for in-home care of Ohioans with developmental disabilities. As its care agency expands to more counties, those hiring plans continue unabated, a Circulo spokesman said Thursday.
