Roleo, a Tallinn start-up founded by a Veriff co-founder and an early Wise engineer, has raised €2.9 million to build an AI agent that finds tech jobs for people who are not looking, and puts them straight in front of hiring managers without a written application. If the model works, job boards and agency recruiters stand to lose a slice of the market for passive candidates; employers are the ones expected to pay.

Photo: Roleo co-founders. Credit: Roleo, via EU-Startups.

The seed round was led by Practica Capital, the Baltic venture firm that closed an €80 million regional fund in 2024, with Nordic investor Inventure taking part. Angel backers include Bolt founder and chief executive Markus Villig, Sergei Anikin, former Wise executive Henrik Bohman, Hedosophia product chief Kristina Lilleõis and the Lemonade Stand fund, according to the company and reporting by EU-Startups, The Recursive and FinSMEs. The round takes Roleo's total funding to €3.46 million. The company did not disclose a valuation.

Roleo was founded in 2025 by chief executive Janer Gorohhov, a co-founder of Estonian identity-verification unicorn Veriff, and Vahur Hansen, who was part of Wise's early engineering team and co-founded the start-up Membo. Its product is a free "career agent" that learns a user's experience, salary expectations, preferences on flexibility and ambitions, scans the European tech job market and, when both sides show interest, connects the candidate directly with the employer.

"Most people spend years building their careers, but only actively manage them when something goes wrong or they decide it is time for a change," Gorohhov said in the announcement. "The goal isn't to have AI make career decisions for people, but to make sure they have the right information and opportunities when those decisions matter."

The numbers behind the pitch

Roleo says its agent evaluates hundreds of thousands of openings each week and typically surfaces about three per user, and that since January it has connected users with 30,000 opportunities "they explored further". The company did not say how many of those led to interviews or hires, the figure that would show whether the agent beats a job board. Dealroom reported that the service has so far run on an invitation-only basis with nearly 500 specialists, including staff from Amazon, Google, Bolt and Wise.

The business model sits on the employer side: professionals use the agent for free, while hiring managers pay for access to qualified candidates who are not actively applying. That is the same pool corporate recruiters and headhunters charge to reach today.

Why it matters for European tech

The deal is another sign of Estonia's founder network recycling money and experience into new companies: the founders of Veriff, Wise and Bolt are all connected to this round. "I've watched Janer build Veriff and I know what Vahur did at Wise. Both know first-hand how hard it is to find and hire great people across Europe," Villig said.

Roleo enters a crowded field. EU-Startups counts at least seven other European AI recruitment rounds this year, including €34.7 million for London's Jack & Jill in September and €18.3 million for Belgium's Spott, totalling about €90.5 million together with Roleo. A €2.9 million seed is small by comparison.

There is also a regulatory angle. The EU's AI Act lists AI systems used to recruit and select candidates among its high-risk categories, which carry extra duties on transparency and human oversight. Roleo says users stay in control of their visibility and personal data, but it has not published details on how its matching decisions are made.

The company says the money will fund product development and expansion across European markets, initially focused on tech professionals and the companies hiring them.

Sources

• Roleo funding announcement, as published by EU-Startups, 2 November 2026
• The Recursive, 2 November 2026
• FinSMEs, 2 November 2026
• Dealroom News, 2 November 2026