Danish startup Kiku raises €4 million to tackle the most overlooked hiring challenge with AI

Copenhagen-based Kiku, an AI-powered recruitment platform purpose-built for high-volume, frontline hiring, today announced €4 million in Seed funding to build the AI infrastructure for one of the most overlooked challenges in HR: hiring at scale for frontline workers.

The funding was led by Cherry Ventures, coming just four months after closing its angel round. With additional investment from Yellow, the VC fund Co-founded by Glovo Founder Oscar Pierre, as well as prominent angels including Fredrik Hjelm and Felipe Navio.

“With Kiku, scale and quality are no longer mutually exclusive. We leverage AI to prove that candidates can be treated fairly while companies drastically improve their ways of working,” said Eric André, Co-founder and CEO of Kiku. “Kiku turns scale into an advantage. It makes fast, high-quality hiring possible, without increasing recruiter headcount or sacrificing candidate experience.”

Founded in 2024 by Eric André and Rasmus Andersen, Kiku is building the AI infrastructure for frontline hiring. By automating sourcing, screening, interviewing, and placement, Kiku looks to help companies scale recruitment with speed, precision, and humanity.

Kiku was inspired by André’s time at Voi where he scaled the business from 0 to 200 people across the Nordics – hiring hundreds of frontline workers yearly.

According to data provided by Kiku, frontline jobs account for over 80% of the global workforce – representing 2.7 billion people – in industries such as retail, hospitality, and logistics, yet recruitment tools have largely overlooked this segment.

These roles face turnover rates of 60–80% annually, yet it still takes over 40 days on average to fill a role. Recruiters spend their time on repetitive tasks like screening and scheduling, while up to 80% of candidates report being ghosted in the process.

The company believes that most hiring tools are built for corporate environments, not for today’s mobile-first, often deskless workforce.

Kiku looks to address this gap with a mobile-first, conversational interface – candidates can apply 24/7 via a simple voice or chat conversation with the company’s purpose built AI agent. It adapts dynamically to different languages and interview formats, ensuring companies can connect with the best candidates: anytime, anywhere.

There are no forms or pre-recorded videos, just a two-way interaction where candidates can ask questions and progress if there’s a mutual fit. According to the company, every applicant is assessed solely on merit – free from bias related to gender, name, age, or ethnicity.

The Kiku platform adds automation to every step of the recruitment process – from sourcing to screening, interviewing, and reference checks – enabling companies to fill roles in “days, not weeks“. Kiku’s conversational AI, “Sara,” conducts thousands of structured interviews weekly, providing candidates with a consistent, always-on, mobile-first experience in any language.

With early adoption in the Nordics, UK, and US, Kiku is reportedly saving recruiters more than 15 hours per role. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand the team, launch in key European markets, and build a frontline-focused brand.

“Kiku is solving one of the most painful and under-invested challenges in hiring,” said Sophia Bendz, Partner at Cherry Ventures. “Eric and Rasmus bring deep operational experience, product insight, and urgency to this problem. We believe Kiku will define the category for AI in frontline recruitment.”

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