Phenom People, Inc.

Who owns Phenom?

Phenom is privately owned by its founders and venture investors including B Capital Group, OMERS Private Equity and Sierra Ventures. It has raised about $161 million and was valued at $1.4 billion in 2021.

What does Phenom do?

Phenom sells an applied AI platform for talent: recruiting, candidate experience, interview scheduling, internal mobility, employee development and workforce analytics, aimed at large enterprises.

Is Phenom a public company?

No. Phenom is a private company and does not trade on any stock exchange. Its last disclosed valuation was $1.4 billion in April 2021.

Where is Phenom headquartered?

Phenom is headquartered at 300 Brookside Avenue in Ambler, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, with its largest employee base in Hyderabad, India.

Who founded Phenom?

Brothers Mahe Bayireddi and Hari Bayireddy founded Phenom with Brad Goldoor in 2010. Mahe serves as CEO and Hari as president and COO.

How many employees does Phenom have?

Phenom employs approximately 2,000 people globally as of late 2025, with roughly half located in India.

Mahe Bayireddi, his brother Hari Bayireddy and Brad Goldoor founded the company in 2010 in the Philadelphia suburbs as Phenom People. The founders had backgrounds in software and recruiting technology and set out to build a candidate experience layer that corporate applicant tracking systems lacked.

The company raised modest early rounds, including a $2.4 million Series A in 2016, while building out its talent experience management suite. Growth accelerated as enterprises consolidated recruiting tools: a $22 million Series B in 2018, $30 million Series C in 2020, and a $100 million Series D in April 2021 led by B Capital Group at a $1.4 billion valuation, giving Phenom unicorn status.

Product development has tracked the AI shift in HR software. Phenom invested early in automation for scheduling, chatbot screening and skills inference, then rebranded its offering around applied AI as generative capabilities arrived. It added a talent marketplace, gig and mentoring modules, and workforce intelligence features aimed at internal mobility.

Phenom expanded through acquisition, buying workforce planning company Edge Networks in February 2025, and continued shipping high-volume hiring products for frontline industries. It remains independent and founder-led, with Mahe Bayireddi as CEO and Hari Bayireddy as president and COO.

The company's trajectory tracks the talent acquisition software market's own evolution. The 2010s rewarded point solutions, career sites, CRM, chatbots, scheduling, and Phenom's bet was that enterprises would eventually demand all of it in one system. That consolidation thesis proved correct: by the early 2020s buyers were actively collapsing recruitment tech stacks, and the platform positioning turned Phenom from a career-site vendor into a platform candidate in large enterprise deals.

The funding rounds tell the growth story. The 2021 Series D valued the company at $1.4 billion, giving it unicorn status at a moment when HR technology investment peaked. Subsequent private market repricing likely moderated that figure, but the company has not raised publicly since and has not needed to.

Phenom has been named to analyst leader grids for talent acquisition platforms and recognized on lists of fastest growing private companies. Its applied AI positioning earned it coverage in HR technology awards, and customers regularly cite scheduling automation gains in case studies.