AI

Warp lands $60M to automate payroll, compliance and HR with AI

Employee management startup Warp today said it has raised $60 million in new funding to expand a platform that uses artificial intelligence to run payroll and other back-office work with little staff involved.

The New York-based company pitches itself as an AI-native alternative to legacy human capital management software, the category long dominated by Workday Inc. Warp argues that capabilities once reserved for large enterprises with dedicated administrators can now run inside software that does the underlying work itself. Register a new hire and the system opens the tax accounts and sets up that person’s apps and devices, with no one assigned to the task.

Warp launched in 2023 and runs payroll, HR, compliance, benefits and information technology for companies from a handful of staff up to 5,000. Payroll runs in seconds across all 50 states and its software agents file returns and clear the tax notices that follow without a person in the loop. Hire a worker and the accounts and devices get set up at once. Access is pulled when the worker leaves.

That work is a familiar headache for small companies. A startup hiring in a new state has to register with the tax authorities and stay on top of the filings and the penalties for getting it wrong are real. Warp’s pitch is that AI can now handle most of it, putting compliance help once limited to big employers within reach of a five-person team.

“Being AI-native isn’t about adding a chatbot to existing software,” the company said in a blog post. “It’s about building systems that understand context, orchestrate workflows, and complete work in the background with minimal human involvement.”

Warp has about 50 staff, three times as many as six months ago. It expects to hit 200 within a year. Its customers are mostly fast-growing AI companies, among them Bland AI, Reducto Inc. and AI code-review startup Greptile.

Battery Ventures led the Series B round. Peak XV, Sound Ventures, Y Combinator and HOF Capital also took part, along with a list of founders and operators that included Shopify Inc. Chief Executive Tobias Lütke, former Stripe Inc. operating chief Claire Hughes Johnson, Dropbox Inc. co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, former Coinbase Global Inc. technology chief Balaji Srinivasan, Eventbrite Inc. co-founder Kevin Hartz, Cruise LLC founder Kyle Vogt and Replit Inc. founder Amjad Masad.

The financing takes Warp’s total funding to $85 million. Sound Ventures led its earlier $25 million round.

Image: Warp