Syndio bets on agent AI with first acquisition in Seattle equity startup history – GeekWire
For the first time in its nine-year history, Syndio is making an acquisition.
The Seattle-based pay equity startup announced Tuesday that it has acquired Embrace.ai, an agent AI startup whose founders and technology will help Syndio build its AI-driven compensation platform.
Austin, Texas-based Embrace.ai is built to infuse AI-driven automation into every business function, focusing on governance and defining business settings. The entire team, led by co-founders Derek Butts and Seth Halpern, will join Syndio’s product and marketing organization, according to the news release.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Syndio, which works with nearly 400 global businesses including more than half of the Fortune 100, has been pursuing beyond pay equity reporting to what it calls “Decision Intelligence for Pay” – helping companies manage compensation decisions in real time, from job sales to eligibility cycles.
“Payment decisions are among the most important decisions a company makes, and they require AI that understands the background, data, and expectations of business management,” Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said in a statement. “That technology will help us move faster as we build the next generation of payment intelligence.”
In a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, Colacurcio called the acquisition “a bold bet,” noting that the Embrace.ai team has spent three years deploying agent AI inside real companies.
“You don’t hire that role on time,” he wrote. “When you find the whole team has it, you move.”
He also said that he spent a year digging into the tools, sitting next to the engineers and understanding what it takes to go fast, saying, “It’s changed the way I show up in every product conversation we have.”
The addition of the Embrace.ai team is expected to accelerate Syndio’s AI roadmap, increase the depth of native AI technology, and strengthen the governance and interpretation of complex compensation decisions — areas Syndio says are increasingly needed by large employers.
Syndio was founded in 2017 by data scientist and law professor Zev Eigen to help companies analyze and communicate pay equity. Colacurcio, who founded the workplace collaboration company Smartsheet, joined in 2018. The company raised $50 million in a Series C round in 2021, bringing its total funding to $83 million.
Syndio is ranked No. 48 on the GeekWire 200 index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.
Both founders of Embrace.ai are veterans of Workday, the human capital management giant. Butts spent 13 years there in product marketing, corporate strategy and M&A, and will join Syndio as SVP of product strategy. Halpern led global sales operations at Workday and WP Engine, and will join as a strategic advisor.
“Every salary decision has consequences for the employee and the employer,” Butts said in a statement, “so AI must be accurate, understand deep context, and support, not involve human judgment.”
