Deel Lands $300M At $17.3B Valuation Amid Spying Saga, Uptick In HR Software Funding

HR and payroll platform Deel has raised $300 million in fresh funding at a $17.3 billion valuation. The deal was led by new investor Ribbit Capital and previous investors Andreessen Horowitz and Coatue Management. Other investors including General Catalyst and Green Bay Ventures also participated.

The round for New York-based Deel comes as funding for HR tech startups overall has seen an uptick this year. Through mid-September, HR software startups globally have raised $1.9 billion in venture funding this year, per Crunchbase data. That’s just under the $2 billion raised by such startups in all of 2024. U.S.-based human resources software startups have raised a combined $1.2 billion, up from the $1.1 billion raised last year.

Still, this year’s figures are a far cry from 2021’s banner figures, when startups in the sector raised $10.5 billion globally, per Crunchbase data.

Deel’s new round also follows an ugly and closely watched corporate espionage scandal between Deel and rival Rippling, which itself raised a $450 million Series G round at a $16.8 billion valuation earlier this year, despite the drama.

Investors were apparently more interested in Deel’s business metrics than the Rippling saga. Deel said it posted $100 million in revenue last month for the first time, and closed out its third consecutive year of profitability. It hit $1 billion in ARR earlier this year and says it now counts more than 37,000 businesses as customers, processing $22 billion in payroll a year.

The company, which has now raised nearly $1.3 billion from investors since its founding in 2019, said it will use the cash infusion for strategic acquisitions, to expand its geographic reach to more than 100 countries by 2029, and to accelerate its automation and AI-powered offerings.

“Deel — itself a fully remote, global company with employees in over 100 countries — is uniquely positioned to build products for global expansion,” Ribbit Capital founder Micky Malka said in a statement. “The company and its leadership have a limitless opportunity ahead of them.”

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Illustration: Dom Guzman