Humanly has acquired recruitment marketing company CareerArc, its fifth acquisition since 2025, with no price disclosed. The AI hiring tools it is consolidating fall into the EU AI Act’s high-risk employment category, whose duties were delayed to December 2027. Humanly has bought CareerArc, its fifth acquisition in two years. No price was disclosed, and the buyer employs 50 people.
The deal pairs Humanly’s automated chat, screening and interview tools with CareerArc’s social recruiting software and interactive career-site maps, GeekWire reported. Humanly is based in Bellevue, Washington, and was founded in 2018. CareerArc dates to 2009 and sits in Burbank, California. Nine of CareerArc’s 13 staff are joining.
Humanly bought Sprockets, Qualifi and HourWork in 2025, and the employee engagement platform Anthill earlier this year. It has raised $52M in total, including $25M in April, and counts Microsoft, Domino’s and MGM Resorts among more than 120 customers. What it is assembling is a category European law treats separately. Annex III of the AI Act makes AI used for recruitment and selection high-risk, including screening applications and evaluating candidates.
Those duties were pushed to December 2027 by the Omnibus, from August this year, alongside six other categories. One obligation did not move. The AI Act’s transparency rules took effect on 2 August and apply whether or not a system is high-risk, which reaches candidate-facing chat of the kind Humanly sells. European employers are the most reluctant buyers.
A Morgan McKinley survey found more than half of UK employers do not use AI to hire, against 36% across seven markets. Candidates are warier still. Some 23% said being assessed by AI would make them far less likely to apply, rising to 28% in the UK, and only 5% would accept a decision made by AI alone. Another 44% would accept one with a human involved.
London has its own entry. Ethos raised $22.75M from Andreessen Horowitz to match experts to work, and lists possible high-risk classification under the AI Act among its own risks. The consolidation logic is volume. Humanly sells to high-volume employers, and a quarter of employers in the same survey said rising application numbers are slowing their screening.
Generative AI is part of why, with 78% of jobseekers in that survey using it to look for work. What the deal does not come with is a number. There is no price, no revenue figure, and nothing on how many of the five acquired products survive as products. Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
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