Amsterdam-based Carv acquires Tilburg’s Recrubo: Co-founder Matthijs Metzemaekers on AI-driven hiring, tackling work overload and ensuring fairness

Amsterdam-based Carv, an AI recruitment technology company, announced that it has acquired Recrubo, a conversational AI platform for recruitment.

The announcement comes a few months after raising €9.18M in a seed round of funding. 

“For the longest time, Recruitment teams have faced challenges in creating a seamless hiring journey from first engagement to hire. By combining Recrubo’s conversational AI with Carv’s recruitment AI capabilities, we can now cover the entire recruitment journey and deliver a comprehensive AI experience that turns our vision into reality. I’m extremely excited about what’s ahead,” says Niels Tukker, Founder of Recrubo.

Why the acquisition?

Based out of Tilburg, Recrubo‘s conversational AI platform automates candidate engagement through bots on popular channels like WhatsApp, SMS, and voice.

The company’s AI-driven technology streamlines hiring with automated screening and CRM engagement, improving efficiency.

“With Recrubo, we’re significantly enhancing our Conversational AI capabilities, especially for volume hiring. The technology improves how Carv engages with large numbers of candidates simultaneously—via chat and voice—making the experience more natural, scalable, and efficient. This means recruiters can handle high-volume hiring faster and with better candidate interaction, without compromising quality,” explains co-founder Matthijs Metzemaekers to Silicon Canals on Recrubo’s acquisition.

Carv: Streamlining the recruitment process

Founded by Barend Raaff and Matthijs Metzemaeker, Carv claims its platform tackles a major problem in today’s talent acquisition: recruitment has become synonymous with administrative work.

The company’s AI can take over these time-consuming admin duties, allowing recruiters to spend more time focusing on candidates.

“Carv is built as an AI-first platform. Most AI solutions are either a thin AI layer on top of legacy software or quick-fix tools riding the ChatGPT hype. Carv lets recruiters truly offload tasks to AI across the entire hiring process,” says Matthijs.

Carv now enables recruiters to leverage AI for tasks that typically distract them from their ability to connect with candidates.

Throughout 2024, the company claims to have grown over 10x with its ‘zero admin’ platform, onboarding thousands of recruiters and offloading them from administrative tasks.

Carv’s AI platform continuously updates candidate data and takes over tedious, repetitive tasks, enabling a faster and smoother recruitment workflow.

Ensuring fairness in AI-driven recruitment

The Dutch company aims to improve recruitment for companies at various stages of their AI journey, from those just starting to those looking to advance their AI use.

Additionally, Carv takes a proactive approach to ensure fairness and eliminate bias in AI-driven recruitment.

“While the EU AI Act is still in its implementation phase and organisations are not yet required to comply. At Carv, fairness and compliance are already part of our daily agenda. We ensure our customers are prepared from day one, so they stay ahead of regulations and remain compliant throughout their AI journey,” concludes Matthijs.

Carv is servicing a broad group of clients, from small recruiting agencies to dominant players such as Manpower Group, DHL, G4S, and Carrefour.

Moving forward, the company aims to expand its AI capabilities to further streamline administrative tasks, increase efficiency, and free recruiters to focus on meaningful human connections.