Bullhorn acquires Amsterdam-based Textkernel for €300 million

US software company Bullhorn acquired Amsterdam-based Textkernel on 18 June 2024 for €300 million. Textkernel develops AI technology for CV parsing, candidate matching and labour market analysis, and serves more than 2,000 customers worldwide, including eight of the ten largest staffing agencies in the world.

Bullhorn, headquartered in Boston and specialising in software for the staffing and recruitment sector, has approximately 10,000 customers worldwide and spends more than $47 million annually on research and product development. With the acquisition of Textkernel, the company adds a Dutch player that has been delivering parsing and matching technology to major international clients, including Fortune 500 companies, for over two decades.

Textkernel's management team, including CEO Gerard Mulder and COO Guus Meijer, will remain in place. The Amsterdam headquarters will be retained.

What Textkernel does and who it serves

Textkernel was founded in 2001 by Jakub Zavrel and Remko Bonnema. The company automates the flow of data between employers and candidates: its technology reads CVs and job postings, matches candidates to roles based on semantic analysis, and delivers insights derived from labour market data. Textkernel processes more than 1.3 billion job vacancies worldwide each year.

In the years leading up to the acquisition, Textkernel also grew through acquisitions. Between 2020 and 2022, the company acquired US-based Sovren, which also produced CV parsing software, as well as Dutch companies Akyla, Wiseguys and Joboti. The latter two are active in the field of recruitment process automation and chatbot technology for hiring.

Since 2020, Textkernel had been largely owned by Dutch investor Main Capital Partners. Prior to that, US-based CareerBuilder had acquired a majority stake in 2015 and further increased it in 2019.

What Bullhorn aims to achieve with the acquisition

Bullhorn is backed by investors Stone Point Capital, Insight Partners and Genstar. The company positions itself as a broad platform for the staffing sector, with software for managing candidates, assignments and client relationships.

Matt Fischer, President and COO of Bullhorn, described Textkernel's parsing technology as a key element of Bullhorn's broader AI strategy in a statement accompanying the acquisition. By integrating Textkernel's parsing and matching capabilities, Bullhorn aims to offer its existing customers more extensive automation options for processing candidate data and matching profiles to vacancies.

Gerard Mulder, CEO of Textkernel, indicated that he views the acquisition as a step towards further strengthening the company's position in the international recruitment market, in combination with Bullhorn's existing customer base and distribution network.

The acquisition of Textkernel is not the only Dutch deal Bullhorn completed this year. Earlier in 2024, the company also acquired Mployee, a Dutch provider of front- and middle-office software for the staffing sector.

Significance for the Dutch AI and recruitment technology sector

At an acquisition price of €300 million, the Textkernel deal ranks among the larger exits in the Dutch AI sector in recent years. It illustrates that specialised AI companies with a longstanding market position and proven technology are attractive to international strategic buyers, even when they have not been built through the conventional venture capital route.

The fact that Bullhorn acquired two Dutch companies in quick succession points to the reputation the Dutch HR-tech sector has built among international players. For other founders and investors in the Dutch AI scene, the deal provides a reference point for valuations in vertical AI applications, where domain-specific data and long-standing client relationships play a decisive role in the price strategic buyers are willing to pay.