Fika Jobs Raises 4M for AI Video Interviews

The candidate then completes a roughly 10-minute video interview with an AI agent. That agent is currently powered by Google Gemini models, which handle the back-and-forth conversation and follow-ups.

Here is the part that makes it a product and not just a chatbot: after the interview, Fika automatically turns the responses into short video clips and organizes them into a profile. The candidate is not re-applying to every role. They keep one living profile that employers can discover and revisit as new openings appear.

The pitch came directly from experience. Co-founders and brothers Jakob Dubois, the CEO, and Alexander Dubois, the CTO, hit on the idea while running their previous startup, the social app Gaff.

Video profiles carry a real bias risk worth flagging up front: when an employer can see a candidate race, age, gender, appearance, and accent before reading their qualifications, it can open the door to discrimination that a plain resume at least partly hides. Candidates and hiring teams should treat early video screening with that caution in mind.

Why Fika is positioned differently from other AI hiring tools

Most of the AI hiring wave so far has been employer-facing. Tools from rivals like Alex, Maki, and Mercor focus on helping companies source, screen, and match candidates faster. The AI works for the recruiter.

Fika inverts that. The platform is built around the candidate maintaining a video-first profile, and the employer browses people who have already been interviewed by the AI. In theory that surfaces communication skills and cultural fit early, which is exactly what the founders say a resume tends to bury.

Jakob Dubois told TechCrunch that while hiring for Gaff, they nearly passed on a strong candidate whose resume did not stand out, then changed their minds within minutes of actually talking to him. That gap between paper and person is the entire bet.

The model could matter most for early-career professionals and people from non-traditional backgrounds, whose potential is hard to read off a one-page document.

The business model: free for seekers, success-fee for employers

The pricing is the other thing to watch, because it tells you who the customer really is.

• Job seekers: free to use.
• Employers: nothing up front.
• The catch: Fika takes 10 percent of a hired candidate first-year salary on a successful hire.

The company frames that 10 percent as a discount on the 20 to 30 percent placement fees traditional recruiters and headhunters often charge. It is a recruiter-replacement economic model dressed in a consumer-app interface.

What happens next over the coming months

The near-term moves are already scheduled. Fika plans to open early access for candidates this week, with a broader public launch expected this fall.

The company is starting in Sweden before expanding internationally. It currently runs a small team and expects to reach around 10 employees by the end of the year, with the fresh capital going toward product development, hiring, and that wider launch.

Demand signals look early but real. The founders say more than 100 companies are on the waitlist, though they declined to name them. Separately, more than 50 companies have already tested the platform, including Plenty Labs, SICS.ai, Kognity, and Rebtel.

What to watch

Three questions will decide whether this is a category or a curiosity. First, do candidates accept being interviewed by an AI as the front door to a job, rather than a hurdle? Second, can Fika manage the bias problem its own video-first format introduces well enough to satisfy employers in regulated hiring markets? Third, does the 10 percent success fee hold up against free or cheaper employer-side screening tools once recruiters fight back?

For now, the takeaway is concrete: a 4 million dollar bet that the most useful thing AI can do in hiring is not filter people out faster, but give more of them a fair shot at being seen.

Source: TechCrunch