Global Payroll Startup Deel Raises $156M At $1.25B Valuation

Deel, an international payroll company, announced on Wednesday that it raised $156 million in Series C funding led by the YC (Y Combinator) Continuity Fund and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital.

Deel was founded in 2018 by Alex Bouaziz, a French immigrant to Israel who completed a degree at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and became an entrepreneur and investor, and Shuo Wang, who serves as the company’s chief revenue officer. Both are MIT alumni.

The company built a payroll and compliance platform for businesses and organizations hiring and paying contractors globally. The solution includes onboarding, localized contracts, rights of work document requests, tax forms, invoice generation, and payments in more than 120 currencies.

Deel is headquartered in San Francisco with an office in Tel Aviv, but says its entirely remote team of 120 is distributed across 26 countries.

Deel says it is “pushing forward the frontier of remote work to create a world with zero hiring boundaries.” The company says its experienced massive growth in 2020 and now supports 1,800 businesses with 250 labor law and accounting experts as partners.

The recent funding values Deel at $1.25 billion. It previously raised $14 million in May 2020 in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and another $30 million in September 2020.

“Deel is now the leading solution for remotely scaling teams,” said Bouaziz in a statement. “We knew that it didn’t have to be so hard to hire and pay people abroad and Deel tackled that problem head on. Now with this third sizable investment in less than a year, we are excited to open even more doors for businesses, employees, and contractors around the world.” 

“The way people work is fundamentally changing and Deel is leading the way,” said Ali Rowghani, from YC Continuity. “Deel was at the forefront of remote work pre-pandemic, and it will be long after. The team is uniquely equipped to remove the obstacles of remote work so companies hire the best talent in the world, instead of only those nearest to them.”