Stockholm startup Fika Jobs just raised $4 million in pre-seed funding to build a hiring platform where AI agents interview candidates and turn their answers into short-form video profiles. According to TechCrunch AI, the company announced the round on Tuesday, with plans to open early access to job seekers this week and launch publicly this fall. Think LinkedIn crossed with TikTok, with a Gemini-powered interviewer in the middle.
The pitch is a swing at one of tech’s most broken processes. TechCrunch AI reports that Fika wants to replace the resume-and-cover-letter grind with a living video profile employers can browse anytime.
How it works
The flow is built around the candidate, not the job posting:
- You connect your LinkedIn profile, and Fika’s AI reviews your background.
- It generates personalized interview questions based on what it finds.
- You complete a roughly 10-minute video interview with an AI agent, currently running on Google’s Gemini models.
- Fika chops your responses into short clips and builds them into a profile.
- Employers discover and revisit that profile as new roles open up, so you’re not reapplying everywhere.
It’s free for job seekers. Employers pay nothing up front, but Fika takes 10% of a successful hire’s first-year salary. The founders note that’s well below the 20% to 30% that traditional recruiters and headhunters typically charge.
Why this is different
What stands out here is the direction Fika is betting on. Most AI hiring tools, including rivals like Alex, Maki, and Mercor, point their models at employers to help source, screen, and match candidates faster. Fika flips that. It hands the AI to the candidate first, then sells employers access to a pool of people who’ve already been interviewed and evaluated.
The idea came from brothers Jakob Dubois (CEO) and Alexander Dubois (CTO), who hit the problem firsthand at their previous startup. “When we were building [social app] Gaff, we spent a lot of time recruiting and almost passed on a candidate because his resume did not really stand out,” Jakob Dubois told TechCrunch. “We ended up speaking with him anyway, and within minutes, his grit, drive, and ambition became obvious. Exactly the kind of person we wanted to hire.”
That’s the core thesis: some of the traits employers care about most don’t show up on paper. A video-first profile could help early-career people and candidates from non-traditional backgrounds get a fair look.
The bias problem nobody should skip
Here’s the catch, and it’s a real one. When employers can see a candidate’s race, age, gender, appearance, and accent before judging their qualifications, you reopen the door to discrimination that a resume at least partially hides. There’s a reason plenty of companies moved toward blind resume screening in the first place. Fika’s approach runs straight against that trend, and how the company handles it will matter as much as the tech.
The numbers and the backers
A few details worth tracking:
- More than 100 companies are on the waitlist, though the founders won’t say which.
- Over 50 companies have already tested the platform, including Plenty Labs, SICS.ai, Kognity, and Rebtel.
- The team is small now but expects to hit around 10 people by year-end.
- Fika starts in Sweden, then expands internationally.
The round was led by Luminar Ventures, with Alliance VC joining in. There’s a fun wrinkle in the cap table too: King co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, the duo behind Candy Crush, put money in.
What to watch
Fika is a small bet right now, but it’s pointed at a big idea: that the next hiring platform gets built around the candidate’s voice, not the employer’s filter. If the video format earns trust and the bias risks get handled head-on, this could nudge the whole category. If not, it’ll be a cautionary tale about why blind screening exists. Either way, the candidate-first AI interview is worth keeping on your radar. Full details are in the original TechCrunch AI report.