50skills Raises $6M to Build AI Agents That Run HR Workflows

50skills, an Iceland-based HR automation startup, has raised $6 million in new funding to expand its AI-powered platform, which allows businesses to describe their internal processes in simple language and have AI agents build and execute the corresponding workflows.

The round was led by Frumtak Ventures, with participation from Swiss Post Ventures, Avant, and DRD Investments. The new funding comes after the company spent almost three years operating without seeking additional capital, as customer demand and usage continued to grow.

Founded by Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson, 50skills is building a different approach to HR automation. Instead of requiring users to manually configure every workflow, the platform allows employees to explain what they want to accomplish, after which an AI agent can create the underlying process.

From workflow descriptions to working agents

The idea behind 50skills came from Kristjánsson's experience at Icelandic fintech company Meniga.

While working there, he encountered difficulties connecting different systems and creating workflows that behaved as intended. That experience highlighted a broader challenge for businesses: knowing what a process should accomplish is often easier than actually configuring the technology required to execute it.

Kristjánsson launched 50skills to address that gap.

The platform allows customers to provide context about their organization and describe their processes using natural language. An agent then helps design and streamline those processes.

The system can subsequently generate additional agents to perform specific tasks.

These agents can screen candidates, send policy alerts, draft onboarding communications and handle other recurring HR activities.

The approach means users are not simply interacting with one general-purpose chatbot. Instead, the platform can create specialized agents around the processes and requirements of a particular organization.

Six million automated actions

Customer usage has become a major reason behind the company's latest funding round.

According to Kristjánsson, customers automated more than one million actions through the platform last year.

This year, that figure reached six million actions within just a couple of months.

The increase in activity helped convince the company that it was time to raise additional capital after nearly three years without a new financing round.

Kristjánsson said the company had not needed to raise earlier because it had been operating efficiently while customers continued increasing their use of the platform.

That changed as customers began using more of 50skills' capabilities and asking for additional functionality.

The new funding gives the company additional resources to respond to that demand while expanding its presence beyond Iceland and the Nordic region.

A 20-person team building an AI HR platform

50skills currently has approximately 20 employees across Iceland, Stockholm and the UK.

The company is hiring in Stockholm and Iceland as well as for remote positions.

It also plans to expand into the United States and the Benelux region.

Hiring in those markets has not yet begun, but the expansion would give 50skills access to larger HR technology markets and a broader customer base.

The company is therefore entering its next stage with a relatively small team compared with established HR technology companies.

An increasingly competitive HR automation market

50skills is entering a market that already includes large HR technology platforms and newer AI-focused companies.

Personio has reached an $8.5 billion valuation, while Rippling has reached $16.8 billion. HiBob has raised $565 million.

Other companies are also experimenting with AI-powered HR automation, including Shapes in Tel Aviv and Central, which was backed by Y Combinator.

The difference in 50skills' approach is its focus on allowing the customer to describe a business process and then having an agent construct the workflow.

That puts workflow creation itself at the center of the product.

Rather than asking an HR team to learn another complex automation system, the company is attempting to make the process more conversational.

AI agents become part of HR operations

The broader shift taking place in enterprise software is from AI that answers questions toward AI that performs work.

For HR teams, that could mean automating repetitive processes such as candidate screening, employee onboarding, policy communication and other administrative tasks.

50skills is positioning its platform around this transition.

The company uses multiple AI models and combines them with business context supplied by customers. That context allows the system to build workflows that are specific to an organization's processes rather than relying solely on generic prompts.

This is particularly relevant for HR because company policies and workflows can vary significantly between organizations.

An onboarding process at a 50-person startup can look very different from one at a multinational organization, even when the basic objective is the same.

Responsible AI remains part of the strategy

While automation is central to the product, Kristjánsson also emphasizes the importance of human oversight.

He argues that AI needs to be used responsibly and that people should remain involved in how these systems operate.

That consideration becomes increasingly important as AI agents move from generating suggestions to taking actions inside business systems.

An HR agent that screens candidates or sends employee communications is operating within processes that can directly affect people. Companies therefore need controls around how those actions are created, reviewed and executed.

50skills' focus on combining business context, AI agents and human oversight reflects that broader challenge.

Funding will support the next phase

The company plans to use its $6 million funding to accelerate growth, expand its team and support international expansion.

Its immediate hiring focus remains the Nordic region and remote positions, while the United States and Benelux are being considered as future markets.

The company's recent usage growth provides a key indicator of the opportunity ahead.

Moving from more than one million automated actions in a year to six million in just a few months shows how quickly customers can increase their reliance on workflow automation once the platform becomes embedded in daily operations.

For 50skills, the next challenge will be turning that usage growth into broader adoption across markets while maintaining the human oversight and responsible AI practices it says are central to its approach.

The company is betting that the future of HR software will not simply be employees using AI tools, but AI agents that understand an organization's processes and build the workflows needed to execute them.