Remote Raises $300M As Distributed Workforce Tools Gain Traction

As more companies grapple with the logistics of managing distributed workforces, startups offering tools to help with the challenges are seeing high demand. They’re seeing plentiful funding too.

The latest evidence of red-hot investor interest came in the form of a $300 million Series C announced today for Remote, a provider of international payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliance services for businesses. The round comes less than a year after the company closed its $150 million Series B in July, at a valuation over $1 billion. 

SoftBank led the latest round, with participation from existing investors Accel, Sequoia, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, General Catalyst, and Gaingels. The financing follows some major scaling at Remote, which said it grew by 900 percent in the past year, to more than 900 people across over 65 countries.

Remote describes itself as an “employer of record service,” essentially enabling companies to make hires, do payroll, and handle compliance in countries where they don’t have existing operations. The San Francisco-headquartered unicorn also offers tools to help businesses pay and manage independent contractors across the globe.

The new round for Remote comes less than two weeks after Omnipresent, a provider of tools for managing payroll and compliance for international teams, pulled in $120 million in Series B funding led by Kinnevik AB and Tencent. 

Founded in 2019, London-headquartered Omnipresent has also presided over exceptionally fast growth. In 2021, the company said its revenue grew 25x and our team by 10x in 2021. 

Stepped-up funding for Remote and Omnipresent comes as money is pouring into human resource tech like never before. Total venture dollars invested hit nearly $9.2 billion in 2021, per Crunchbase data. That’s more than the totals for 2019 and 2020 combined.

Meanwhile, 2022 is off to a brisk start as well, with $2.46 billion invested. For recent months, we’ve seen a number of deals in the multiple hundreds of millions as well. Standouts include:

• San Francisco-based payroll and compliance platform Deel closed a $425 million Series D led by Coatue at a $5.5 billion valuation last month;
• Paris-based Payfit, a provider of automation tools for payroll and other HR tasks, raised $280 million in a January Series E round;
• Munich-based people workflow automation company Personio, raised a $270 million Series E led by Greenoaks at a $6.3 billion valuation, also in October;
• San Francisco-based payroll and benefits platform Rippling closed a $250 million Series C led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Global Growth at a $6.5 billion valuation last month;
• New York-based workforce management platform Papaya Global locked down a $250 million Series D led by Insight Partners at a $3.7 billion valuation in September; and
• San Francisco-based background-check automation firm Checkr raised a $250 million Series A led by Durable Capital valuing it at $4.6 billion, also in September.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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