Firstwork raises USD $15 million to expand AI onboarding

Firstwork has raised USD $15 million in a Series A round led by Earlybird Venture Capital, bringing the New York company's total funding to USD $20 million.

The round also included Legion VC, Deel Ventures, and existing investors Gradient and Y Combinator. Firstwork will use the funds to expand its applied AI, research, engineering, and go-to-market teams, grow its presence in the United States and Europe, and extend its software into more areas of frontline workforce operations.

The company focuses on the administrative processes between a job application and a worker's first shift, as well as the follow-up tasks that continue during employment. These include document checks, right-to-work verification, background screening, training, payroll setup, recurring compliance work, and worker support across multiple systems.

Employers in sectors such as care, logistics, and energy face persistent staffing shortages, while lengthy onboarding processes can cause candidates to drop out before they start work. Firstwork argues that many of the workers companies need have already applied, but are lost in fragmented hiring and clearance processes.

Founded in 2024 by Vardhan Kapoor and Shubham Choudhary, Firstwork sells software that sits on top of existing HR, payroll, and screening systems. It uses AI agents to move workers from application to first shift, manage ongoing compliance requirements, and flag post-shift issues that may indicate a worker is at risk of leaving.

More than 150,000 frontline workers now start work through the platform each month, according to the company. It says customers including Deel, Job&Talent, Relay, Wonolo, and BGSF have cut the time workers and HR teams spend on each new hire by as much as 90%.

At one of its largest customers, Firstwork says its system helped triple the number of qualified applicants who reached their first shift. The company argues that employers still rely on systems designed mainly to record events rather than do the operational work needed to get people into jobs quickly.

Kapoor previously led APAC at Remitly and worked on strategy at Deliveroo Singapore. Choudhary was a director of engineering at Deel after helping build Rippling's global employment infrastructure.

"The systems employers rely on were built to record what happened, not to actually do the work," said Vardhan Kapoor, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Firstwork. "That leaves HR and operations teams spending enormous amounts of time chasing documents, coordinating across systems, and supporting workers through processes that extend well beyond day one. Applied AI changes what is possible. We can now give every frontline worker the kind of support that used to be reserved for the top of the labor market, from the moment they apply through every stage of their employment."

The company began by targeting the period between an accepted offer and the first shift, often one of the most operationally complex stages of hiring. It is now extending its agents into re-verification, credential renewals, recurring training, compliance management, and broader worker support.

Earlybird framed the investment as a bet on a large market where companies still use manual teams to handle onboarding and compliance work. The investor said Firstwork has gained traction in less than two years by automating processes at scale.

"Firstwork is addressing one of the largest untouched opportunities for applied AI in enterprise software. In under two years, Firstwork has built agents that automate compliance workflows at scale, performing millions of actions every month to reduce the time to clear a worker from days to minutes," said Tim Rehder, General Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital. "Rather than competing for software budgets, Firstwork competes for the far larger budget employers spend on the people and outsourced teams who do onboarding and compliance by hand, winning 7-figure deals already. That makes it one of the biggest opportunities in applied AI."

The broader labour market backdrop helps explain investor interest in businesses focused on frontline staffing. According to figures cited by the company, Europe is on course to face a shortage of 950,000 health workers by 2030 and is already short more than 500,000 truck drivers, while 60% of energy companies worldwide report labour shortages. In the United States, the projected shortfall in registered nurses will exceed 267,000 by 2028.

For employers, the challenge is not only attracting applicants but keeping them engaged through the administrative process. Delays in checks, paperwork, and training can lead candidates to accept another role before they ever start work.

Prerana Issar, an adviser to Firstwork and former Chief People Officer at J. Sainsbury and NHS England, pointed to the operational effect of those losses on frontline businesses.

"In frontline businesses, workforce capacity is the strategy. Every candidate lost between offer and first shift means an uncovered shift, a service gap, and revenue left on the table. Firstwork turns onboarding from an administrative cost into a competitive advantage, and frees operations teams to focus on the work only people can do," said Issar.