Networking platform Grapevine has raised $4.1 Mn (about ₹37.9 Cr) from Kae Capital, Peak XV Partners, and upGrad cofounder and chairman Ronnie Screwvala to scale its new AI-led job discovery platform TAL.

Grapevine cofounder Saumil Tripathi took to X to make the funding announcement. Along with the funding round, he also announced the launch of TAL – an AI-powered talent agent which scans jobs on the users’ behalf and recommends the suitable ones. 

“3 years and 1M+ users on Grapevine taught us this: The internet today works for companies.Not for talent,” Tripathi said in his post. 

Notably, during the India AI Impact Summit last month, Peak XV announced investments in five AI startups. Round1, another product by Grapevine, was among these five startups.

While Round1 is an AI-native interview practice app where users can simulate job interviews and get feedback on their answers, TAL is a job discovery platform. Grapevine plans to use the fresh capital to scale both these products. 

Founded by Tripathi, Jainam Talsania, and Shreeyash Dharmadhikari, Grapevine started as a networking platform for corporate and startup employees. It enables employees to discuss various issues, including salaries, hiring, layoffs, and work culture, anonymously. The platform has multiple “Communities” for different topics to allow its users to participate in discussions as per their choice. 

It competes with the likes of Teamblind, Glassdoor, Fishbowl, Levels.fyi, and Reddit, among others. 

Amid rising adoption of AI across sectors, the technology is being extensively used for job discovery as well. From assignments to finding jobs and taking interviews, recruiters as well as employees are leveraging AI. 

For instance, Northtstarz.ai is helping startups and companies find the right talent with the help of its small language models, built in-house and trained on 40,000 real-life interviews.

Investors are also actively backing startups using AI for job discovery solutions. For instance, TurboHire raised $6 Mn last year to automate the enterprise recruitment process.