What does future of global payroll look like? Warsaw’s Symmetrical.ai unlocks $18.5 million to lay the roadmap

Poland-based provider of headless payroll technology, symmetrical.ai has raised $18.5 million in financing from top venture capital funds. The round was led by Target Global with the participation from Global Founders Capital, Finch Capital, Partech, Market One Capital and Inovo.

The investment follows the HR tech’s seed investment round in 2020. The Series A funding will accelerate Symmetrical’s expansion into Europe and the U.S and allow it to offer services to franchises and enterprise clients. The proceeds will also be used to grow the team and to further bolster its single-layer global API technology. 

Facilitating payroll processes is a key goal for companies that hire internationally, grow internationally and encounter the problem of paying employees abroad. The global payroll market is estimated to be worth more than $150 billion.

Founded in 2019, Symmetrical is betting big on the segment. The platform aims to make payroll invisible and enable everyone to hire and pay anyone in the world through just a few API calls. Firms (especially flexible workforce companies) are able to scale more quickly and optimise their overall payroll costs. The startup is currently processing paychecks and serving 47 customers across the U.K., Spain, and Poland.

Piotr Smolen, CEO and co-founder, Symmetrical.ai said: “Our bold ambition is to make payroll invisible. We believe that 10 years from now, ‘payroll software’ will be eliminated from the dictionaries. Invisible payroll will be a crucial element across broader platforms and thanks to our vision, we will be at the forefront of this new trend.”

Daniel Wartolowski, COO and co-founder, Symmetrical.ai added: “The biggest pain point for our customers is not having their payroll centralised across all the countries they operate in, thereby being forced to run payroll in an ever-changing jurisdictional environment across many different geographies. This is an extremely complicated and expensive process. Symmetrical’s API technology not only displays payroll but carries complex payroll processes.”

Ben Kaminski, partner, Target Global said: “Over the past few years we have witnessed a radical change in the employer-employee relationship - from gig workers becoming the dominant workforce across many sectors, to employees expecting to be able to work remotely across the globe. This has led to companies having to rethink their payroll operations, traditionally outsourced to old-school companies with rigid processes and poor integration amidst a growing ecosystem of HR tools. This is why we are excited to back Symmetrical.”