Intro: Context + Intent

As 2025 came to a close, we reflected on the numerous conversations, platforms, and builders that genuinely made us stop and think this year.

Through events, podcasts, advisory work, and countless one-on-one conversations, we spent a lot of time with HR tech founders and HR leaders who are deep in the work, trying to solve HR, people and organizational problems that haven’t gone away, and in many cases, have only become more complex.

1. This post isn’t a ranking. 
2. It’s not a “top tools” list. 
3. It’s definitely not hype. 

And, it’s nowhere near an exhaustive list of the movers and shakers in the global HR tech industry. 

Instead, it’s a snapshot of emerging HR tech platforms that stood out to us in 2025 because they’re solving real, persistent problems inside modern workplaces, and what those signals tell us as we head into 2026. This reflection is for HR leaders, founders, and operators who care less about what’s trending and more about what actually holds up over time.

‍The Lens I Used

When we think about emerging HR tech, we're far less interested in buzzwords and far more interested in fundamentals. Throughout 2025, the companies that caught our attention shared a few things in common:

• They’re tackling clear, lived problems HR teams and employees actually experience.
• Their solutions emphasize adoption over novelty.
• ‍They bring clarity to complexity, especially in an AI-saturated market.
• They’re built with scalability and longevity in mind, not short-term trends.
• The founders demonstrate conviction and listening.
• I’d feel genuinely comfortable introducing them to an HR leader I trust.

If a platform consistently checked several of those boxes, it stood out. It’s that simple. 

‍The 2025 HR Tech Signals

Below is a curated group of emerging HR tech companies we personally encountered and spent meaningful time with in 2025. This list isn’t exhaustive, and it’s not intended to be. Together, these platforms span different parts of the employee lifecycle, but they all point in the same direction: they’re building for real-world use, not just attention.

We'll be unpacking each of these more deeply in the weeks and months ahead.

• 50skills (view here): AI-powered and automated employee workflow builder, reducing manual work and creating more consistent people processes.
• ‍Canditech (view here): Structured candidate assessments designed to improve hiring quality and reduce bias.
• ‍Elektrafi (view here): Smart financial well-being platform to help employees feel more financially secure.
• ‍Branco (view here): AI-powered continuous feedback and action planning that aligns goals, skills, and development so teams actually execute and grow.
• ‍Shapes (view here): AI-native People Operating System that helps organizations manage people in their own unique way.
• ‍Caddie (view here): Global hiring marketplace that connects employers with expert headhunters across every major tech hub, delivering qualified shortlists in days.
• ‍Wavy (view here): Centralizing and automating employee experience programming so HR can see what’s driving engagement, without managing dozens of disconnected events and tools.
• ‍Sprout (view here): Digital health and benefits platform supporting fertility and family-building for modern workforces.
• ‍Atrium (view here): Next-gen leadership development platform for growing companies.
• ‍Purposely (view here): Helping companies turn values into action by connecting employees with local nonprofits to strengthen culture and retention.
• ‍Topicflow (view here): AI-powered continuous performance conversations and goal tracking that help managers assess, align, and improve performance without traditional reviews.
• ‍Nurau (view here): Surfacing frontline employee risks in real time so organizations can address people, safety, and operational issues before they escalate.

‍Patterns That Kept Showing Up

Looking across these platforms, a few signals became impossible to ignore:

1. Problem-first beats feature-first – The strongest companies didn’t start with what they built. They started with the friction they removed.
2. ‍Adoption is still the hardest problem in HR tech – Solutions that fit naturally into existing workflows consistently resonated more than complex, all-in-one systems.
3. ‍HR leaders want clarity, not more noise – Especially in an AI-heavy market, tools that simplify decisions, not complicate them, stood out.
4. ‍Conviction + listening beats chasing every data point – The most effective founders balanced customer feedback with a clear point of view.

These patterns matter more than any individual product.

‍Why This Matters Going Into 2026

As we head into 2026, we expect the gap between “attention-driven” HR tech and “adoption-driven” HR tech to widen. The companies highlighted here feel firmly rooted in the latter. Over the next several weeks, we'll be spotlighting each of these platforms individually, focusing on the problem they’re solving, why it matters now, and what made them stand out.

If 2025 was about learning and testing, 2026 feels like a year of focus and scale. We're looking forward to the conversations this sparks.

‍