Recruit Holdings Co., the world’s sixth-largest staffing firm, invested in DataRobot Inc., a Boston-based provider of platforms for general machine learning. Recruit also formed a partnership between DataRobot and the Recruit Institute of Technology, the artificial intelligence research laboratory of Recruit.
The investment was made by RSP Fund No. 6 LLC, operated by Recruit Strategic Partners. The amount invested was not announced.
Launched in June 2012, DataRobot provides a machine learning platform for data scientists and business analysts to build and deploy accurate predictive models.
The technology addresses the shortage of data scientists by changing the speed and economics of predictive analytics, according to Recruit.
“While utilization of data is important in making decisions in business management and various business occasions, the shortage of data scientists increasingly becomes a challenge to many companies,” Recruit reported. “Through this investment and business partnership with RIT, Recruit aims to contribute to development of GML platforms to improve operational efficiency of data scientists and help non-data scientists utilize data. In the future, Recruit will work to disseminate GML platforms in Japan starting with deployment to Recruit group companies.”
Recruit also in November announced an investment in in Align Commerce Corp., a San Francisco-based international payments system firm using blockchain technology.
Align Commerce plans to use the funds raised to facilitate the development of new products and expansion of customer bases, especially in the US.
Align Commerce provides international payments services to businesses in 60 countries, in 22 of which both inward and outward payments are available. Its security-focused service design and operation, such as setting strict standards for the selection of service providers, have attracted a large number of users, according to Recruit. The company launched its service in April 2015 and has conducted more than $1 million in transactions.
Recruit ranks as one of the world’s largest staffing firms but it operates other business, including publishing operations in Japan.
