Carv, a provider of screening, talent pool and administrative software for recruitment, has acquired Recrubo, which provides a conversational artificial intelligence platform for recruitment. The deal was announced just nine months after Carv secured US$10 million in seed funding.

“With the addition of Recrubo’s conversational AI to our platform, we open up an entirely new paradigm of recruiter-AI collaboration,” Matthijs Metzemaekers, co-founder of Carv, said in a press release on 12 March.

“You can now assign admin tasks to AI and let it take over 90% of the communication with your incoming applicants or your existing talent pool.”

Metzemaekers also added information in a note to SIA on the deal.

“The ambition behind Carv has always been to handle all tasks that distract recruiters from building meaningful human connections,” he said. “Automating conversations with candidates and ensuring they are impactful is central to achieving this goal. The decision to buy rather than build is driven by the need for speed — many of our staffing clients require these solutions right now.” 

Recrubo’s conversational AI platform automates candidate engagement through bots on WhatsApp, SMS and voice channels. The technology also streamlines hiring with automated screening and customer relationship management to improve efficiency and boost the candidate experience.

“For the longest time, recruitment teams have faced challenges in creating a seamless hiring journey from first engagement to hire,” Niels Tukker, founder of Recrubo, said in the press release.

“By combining Recrubo’s conversational AI with Carv’s recruitment AI capabilities, we can now cover the entire recruitment journey and deliver a comprehensive AI experience that turns our vision into reality.”

The Carv and Recrubo platform is built with AI and an agentic layer at its core

The deal closed in February. Terms of the transaction were not announced. Carv is based in Amsterdam, while Recrubo is based in Tilburg, Netherlands.

Carv’s seed round closed in June 2024, led by Global Founders Capital and several independent angel investors who had previously backed companies including Slack and Revolut, Carv said in a statement at the time, adding it would use the funding to accelerate its growth and expand the capabilities of its platform.