Pave Joins Unicorn Ranks With $100M Series C, Acquires Option Impact

Compensation startup Pave raised $100 million in a Series C round, the company said Tuesday.

Index Ventures led the funding round, which mints Pave as a new unicorn at a $1.6 billion valuation.

Pave helps companies plan and set benchmarks for employee compensation. In the age of remote work, distributed workforces and a tight labor market, compensation is top of mind for both employees and employers.

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“Compensation is a visceral problem for every company,” Index Ventures partner Mark Goldberg said in a statement. “For generations, we have been stuck with offline, finger-in-the-air practices when figuring out how much to pay people. These problems are both universal and wildly expensive.”

Pave, which was founded in 2019, has 150 employees and more than 2,500 customers, according to a press release from the company.

In addition to the Series C round, Pave announced it acquired Option Impact from Morgan Stanley and will partner with Morgan Stanley at Work, an equity management and financial solutions platform, according to a statement from the company.

Pave is one of several human resources tech companies to raise funding rounds in the past year. Companies Deel, Personio and Rippling have all raised money in the past 12 months, according to Crunchbase. The funding comes as work as we know it has changed, given the number of companies that have gone remote and began hiring employees from around the country and around the world.

Based in San Francisco, Pave last raised a $46 million Series B in August 2021. Investors in the company include Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and Craft Ventures, according to Crunchbase data.