Lever
Headquarters
San Francisco, CAFounded
2012Employees
201-500Funding
Acquired — $123MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.4/10Website
www.lever.co/
Profile updated
About Lever
Lever is a talent acquisition software company founded in 2012 by Nate Smith, Sarah Nahm, Randal Truong, and Brian Noguchi in San Francisco, California. Accepted into Y Combinator in 2012, the company built a platform that merges applicant tracking system (ATS) and candidate relationship management (CRM) functionality into a single product, enabling companies to manage active applicants and passive talent pipelines without separate tools.
Lever's platform includes modules for candidate sourcing, application tracking, interview scheduling, hiring collaboration, workflow automation, and analytics. The company's products—Lever Hire, Lever Nurture, and Lever Analytics—are supported by over 300 third-party integrations. Notable customers have included Netflix, Atlassian, KPMG, and McGraw-Hill Education, with the platform targeting scaling organizations that require combined ATS and CRM capabilities.
Lever raised approximately $123 million across six funding rounds, including a $2.8 million seed round in September 2012 led by SV Angel, a $10 million Series A in October 2014 led by Matrix Partners, a $20 million Series B in January 2016 led by Scale Venture Partners, and a $50 million Series D in 2021 led by Apax Digital Fund. In August 2022, Lever was acquired by Employ Inc., a talent acquisition holding company that also owns JazzHR and Jobvite, expanding Employ's combined customer base to over 26,000 companies.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Lever
All products by Lever reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores Lever
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Lever's product on their own terms. They disagreed by 1.6 points — The Finance Lead was the hardest to convince, The Decision Maker the most positive.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Lever competes with, and how they differ.
Greenhouse pursues the same mid-market-to-enterprise structured-hiring segment as Lever, differentiating with a large third-party integration marketplace and structured interview scorecards baked into its core workflow.
Ashby bundles ATS, sourcing CRM, scheduling and deep pipeline analytics into one product for venture-backed tech companies — the same all-in-one pitch as Lever — but is newer (founded 2018) and leans harder on built-in reporting than on a partner marketplace.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedSmartRecruiters sells an enterprise-first "Talent Acquisition Suite" with a vendor marketplace for assessments and background checks, competing with Lever mainly at the larger end of the market Lever now serves under Employ.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
iCIMS is built for large-enterprise talent acquisition with heavier onboarding and compliance tooling than Lever, overlapping with Lever chiefly at its upper customer tiers rather than its SMB/mid-market core.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Workable, based in Athens, targets smaller hiring teams with a simpler ATS workflow and less of the candidate-nurture CRM emphasis that defines Lever's product.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Workday Recruiting is one module inside a full HCM suite covering payroll, HR and finance, competing with Lever only when a buyer wants a single integrated system rather than a best-of-breed standalone ATS.
Company Timeline
Key milestones in Lever's history, with sources.
- Acquisition
Acquired by Employ Inc.
Employ Inc., the K1 Investment Management-backed parent of Jobvite, JazzHR and NXTThing RPO, acquired Lever for an undisclosed amount; Lever continued operating under its own brand with founder Nate Smith remaining CEO, reporting to Employ CEO Pete Lamson.
recruitingdaily.com - Funding
Series D — $50M led by Apax Digital Fund
Lever closed a $50 million Series D led by Apax Digital Fund, whose partner Mia Hegazy joined Lever's board; the release stated the round brought Lever's total funding to $122.8 million.
prnewswire.com - Funding
Series C — $30M led by Adams Street Partners
Lever raised a $30 million Series C led by Adams Street Partners with Matrix Partners and Scale Venture Partners participating, bringing total funding to $62 million.
globenewswire.com - Funding
Series B — $20M led by Scale Venture Partners
Lever raised a $20 million Series B led by Scale Venture Partners, with Matrix Partners, Index Ventures, Correlation Ventures and a Naval Ravikant-led syndicate participating; the release stated total funding to date of $32.8 million.
globenewswire.com - Funding
Series A — $10M led by Matrix Partners
Lever raised a $10 million Series A led by Matrix Partners to build out its recruiting and hiring platform.
techcrunch.com - Founded
Lever founded by Nate Smith, Sarah Nahm and Randal Truong
Sarah Nahm, Nate Smith and Randal Truong started the recruiting-software company in 2012; Lever went through Y Combinator the same year.
techcrunch.com
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