The AI recruiting landscape,mapped honestly

Live conversational AI interviews (video + phone) including technical, coding, behavioral, and system-design evaluations; scheduling agent; fraud detection; 33+ ATS integrations. Roughly 1,000 interviews a day.

Traction: $17M Series A (Peak XV, Sept 2025); 1M+ candidates interviewed.

Where they stop: No outbound sourcing — it works candidates already in your funnel. Go-to-market centers on healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and staffing rather than startup engineering hiring, and there is no verified autonomous multi-round progression.

Zara runs dynamic 20–30 minute AI interviews with automated rejection feedback, screening ~250K candidates a month — mostly to vet experts for Micro1’s own AI-lab data business, now also sold as SaaS.

Traction: $35M Series A at a $500M valuation (Sept 2025); ~$50M ARR reported.

Where they stop: Center of gravity is supplying human data workers to AI labs, not running customer-side hiring funnels. Screening-stage only — no multi-round orchestration, scheduling funnel, or sourcing for employers.

One-way and live video interviewing, assessment suite including coding tests, and — new for 2025–26 — a two-way voice “AI Interviewer”. Acquired Hireguide’s technology in March 2026 to accelerate agentic hiring.

Traction: Carlyle-owned since 2019; 700+ enterprise customers; ~$35K/yr reported entry pricing.

Where they stop: Enterprise, high-volume DNA. No sourcing, no autonomous funnel (humans decide), and AI-led live coding/system-design rounds are unproven. Priced and packaged for 10,000-employee companies, not startups.

Adaptive two-way AI phone interviews, outreach, scheduling, and rubric scoring for retail, logistics, home care, and staffing. 60+ ATS integrations.

Traction: $8.2M seed (Radical Ventures, Mar 2025); 1M+ interviews claimed.

Where they stop: Voice-first screening for hourly roles — no video, no technical assessments, no multi-round funnel, different market entirely.

LinkedIn’s first AI agent: intake → sourcing strategy → pipeline building over the 1B+ member graph → applicant review → personalized InMail → text pre-screening. Generally available worldwide since September 2025.

Traction: LinkedIn’s agentic hiring products surpassed a $450M annualized run-rate (Microsoft FY26 Q3 earnings).

Where they stop: It does not interview. Engaged candidates are handed back to the recruiter for every conversation, evaluation, and decision — exactly the work Cohera automates. Sold as an add-on to Recruiter seats (~$11–15K/yr each).

LLM-powered talent search over public web data, contact enrichment, AI outreach sequencing, and autonomous sourcing agents. Free tier (5 searches); Starter $119/seat/month ($99 annual), Growth $199, Agents $199/agent/month; ATS/CRM integrations and hiring-manager seats only on the custom Business plan (pricing observed Sep 2026).

Traction: $116M raised; $80M Series B at $850M valuation (DST Global, Mar 2026); claims 5,000 customers (Sep 2026).

Where they stop: Stops before the interview by its own account: its trust center says the product is "designed to be used in the pre-application phase only" and "does not make or contribute to any candidate decision making." No interviews, no scheduling, no evaluation — a candidate Juicebox finds still needs someone to run the entire funnel.

1B+ profile sourcing with deep technical filters (GitHub, patents, publications). “SeekOut Spot” (2025) pairs six AI agents with human recruiters to deliver interview-ready slates in two weeks.

Traction: Raised ~$186M; $1.2B valuation in 2022, followed by two rounds of layoffs (2023–24).

Where they stop: Spot stops at the qualified slate — humans still interview. The company is retrenching rather than expanding into the interview loop.

Sourcing across 45+ open-web sources, multi-channel sequencing, talent CRM, an AI scheduler, and a phone Voice AI that pre-screens (explicitly not interviews). Agentic features launched March 2025.

Traction: ~$45M raised; ~$13K median annual contract.

Where they stop: Its own positioning draws the line: the recruiter keeps interviews and decisions. No technical assessment, no funnel automation.

All-in-one ATS + CRM + scheduling + analytics beloved by high-growth tech. Acquired Talent Llama (late 2025) for a native AI Interviewer (conversational screening, in beta), plus scheduling agents and AI talent rediscovery.

Traction: ~$116M raised (Series D 2025); 4,400+ customers; claims 70% of Forbes’ top AI startups.

Where they stop: AI Interviewer is conversational screening only — no live coding, system design, or ML rounds — and no outbound talent pool. Progression stays human-driven. But it already owns Cohera’s exact target customer, which is why Cohera integrates with ATSs rather than fighting them.

Market-leading structured-hiring ATS. Acquired Ezra AI Labs (voice AI interviewer, closed May 2026) and shipped agents for job kickoff, notetaking, and candidate insights.

Traction: TPG-majority since 2021 (~$820M valuation then); thousands of customers.

Where they stop: Its 2026 AI launch is framed as “strengthen structured hiring, not shortcut it” — humans decide everything. No sourcing, no technical rounds; assessment comes from integrations.

Conversational chat/SMS assistant (“Olivia”) for high-volume frontline hiring: chat screening, conversational apply, scheduling, offers, onboarding. Acquired by Workday, closed October 2025.

Traction: Raised ~$304M; $1.5B valuation in 2021; reported ~$1.1B acquisition price.

Where they stop: Chat screening for hourly/frontline roles — it schedules human interviews rather than conducting AI ones, and has no technical assessment. Different segment; important mostly as category validation.

“Chakra” conducts fully autonomous voice/video interviews with dynamic follow-ups and rubric scoring, on top of the Screen/CodePair assessment suite. Public pricing from $165/month.

Traction: $115M raised; $500M valuation (2022); large developer community.

Where they stop: Assessment-stage only: no sourcing, no outreach, no multi-round funnel — reports feed human decision-making. Candidates must already be in your pipeline.

Assessments, live IDE interviews, ~15-minute conversational AI screens, “Interviewer Agents” pushing scorecards to your ATS (Aug 2025), and multilingual AI phone interviews (Dec 2025).

Traction: ~$90M raised (Series C led by Index); customers include Google, Meta, Anthropic.

Where they stop: Its own tagline: “humans review and make the decision — always.” Screening-oriented agents, no sourcing, no funnel ownership.

Interviews-as-a-service: human Interview Engineers conduct live technical interviews 24/7 (600K+ done). Its Dec 2025 “NextGen Interviews” keep the human interviewer and give the candidate an AI assistant.

Traction: ~$169M raised; $1.1B valuation (2021).

Where they stop: Human-led by design — the cost structure Cohera’s AI interviewer undercuts. Enterprise-only pricing; no sourcing or funnel.

Talent marketplace supplying vetted domain experts to AI labs for model training and evaluation, using a 20-minute AI video interview to vet its own pool. Reported ~$2B annualized run-rate by mid-2026.

Traction: $350M Series C at $10B (Oct 2025); July 2026 reports of talks at a $20B valuation.

Where they stop: Not recruiting SaaS: employers can’t point Mercor at their own role and funnel. It proves AI interviews can clear talent at massive scale — the mechanism Cohera sells directly to employers.