AI recruiting startup Dex raises $5.3m seed to match AI engineers with the companies that need them most

Founded by a former Atomico talent adviser, Dex charges employers agency fees only on successful hires, and has gone from zero to $1.8 million ARR in under six months of charging.

Paddy Lambros spent two and a half years advising roughly 100 European startups on hiring at Atomico, one of Europe’s largest venture capital firms. The recurring lesson, was simple: nearly every serious problem at an early-stage company was downstream of a hiring decision. The wrong person in the role, or the right role left unfilled too long, and otherwise promising companies would stall.

That observation became Dex, an AI talent agent for technical hiring that Lambros founded in early 2025. The London-headquartered startup has raised a $5.3 million seed round led by Notion Capital, with participation from a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures, and angel investors from OpenAI and other firms, the company announced on Monday.

The new ...