German HR tech unicorn Personio has opened an office in New York and plans to double its US workforce by the end of 2023.
Personio currently has 40 staff members in the US, a mix of remote and in-office employees, and plans to make new hires across engineering, product, design and data. Recent hire Bodhi Mukherjee, Personio’s vice president of engineering and a former engineering director at Google in the US, will be the company’s site lead in New York.
“Having an office footprint in the US will help us to better tap into the substantial talent pool that exists there,” says Hanno Renner, Personio’s cofounder and CEO.
It also means that its US-based employees “can enjoy all the benefits that an office location provides without a need to relocate (to Europe),” he adds.
Founded in 2015, Personio has grown to over 1,800 employees across seven offices, excluding its new premises in New York.
The Munich-based HR tech is valued at $8.5bn as of its last funding round in 2022 and is backed by VCs Greenoaks Capital, Northzone and Index Ventures, among others.
A European company
Personio has no plans as of yet to open more US offices.
“We remain a European company whose primary goal is to serve the needs of European SMEs — but our team is and always has been very international,” says Renner.
Earlier this year, Personio changed its legal form from a GmbH (a German limited liability company) to a Societas Europaea (SE) — a European public limited company, which allows companies to carry out business activities more easily across EU member states.
Beyond enshrining Personio as a solely European company, it also lays the foundation for its IPO — which Renner tells Sifted could happen at the earliest in 2024.
