Instawork, a San Francisco startup that connects businesses and hourly service industry workers, has raised millions in new funding as it works to integrate artificial intelligence into its software.
The $60 million Series D round valued the company at $760 million, up from $560 million two years ago. It brings Instawork's total funding to about $160 million.
The new round was led by TCV and also included 9Yards Capital, Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock and former NFL wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald Jr.
The company, legally known as Garuda Labs, said it raised the new capital to build out its AI capabilities to improve the way in which it connects businesses with hourly workers who are looking for flexible shifts, Instawork's head of communications Kira Caban told me.
"The way people have hired in the workforce hasn't changed much" even amid the rise of so-called gig work over the past decade, Caban said, but Instawork is "seeing rapid adoption … and hunger for flexibility."
Instawork describes itself as a "flexible work platform" that focuses on connecting hourly service industry workers with jobs in industries such as hospitality and food service. Available jobs range from temporary and short-term contract positions to full-time W-2 positions.
For businesses, Instawork also provides data on competitive wages and helps companies identify workers that are likely to be high-performers and reliable.
And for job seekers, Instawork says it offers the flexibility of gig work but with more stability, and it will also begin building out a new skills training and certification program for workers.
It has more than 4 million workers using its platform, half of whom joined just over the past year, including around 250,000 people who are based in the Bay Area.
The company declined to provide specifics about how many businesses also use its services to find workers but said it has more than 15,000 work sites listed across the U.S. and Canada and works with five large hotel chains, large retail distribution centers and a "majority" of professional sports stadiums in the U.S.
Its website promotes open positions for jobs including bartending, concessions, cooking, sanitation, warehousing, merchandizing and general labor.
"Our goal is to expand as rapidly as possible," Caban said. While the company doesn't have any near-term plans for a bigger international expansion, its business partners "are pulling us into new markets regularly."
It currently operates across most of the U.S. and will add Alaska and Hawaii soon.
The company is hiring for its own operations particularly in sales and engineering but also across product, legal, finance and marketing. It currently has more than 500 employees around the world.
Instawork was co-founded in 2015 by CEO Sumir Meghani and CTO Saureen Shah, and they went through Y Combinator's accelerator program that same year.
"There’s a large portion of jobs that exist that are not online. Business owners have a job in their head or just put a sign in the window," Meghani told the San Francisco Business Times in a 2016 interview. "If we can make those jobs available online, get the applicant pool online and facilitate those connections, that’s really powerful."
