According to Business Insider, a Tel Aviv startup called Shapes has raised $24 million in a funding round that includes a $15 million Series A closed in October, led by Entrée Capital. Founded in 2020 by Arnon Nir and Shirley Baumer, former Monday.com founding members, the company rebranded from DreamTeam and offers an AI-powered HR platform it calls “PeopleOS.” The platform works like an app store, letting companies install different AI agents to automate workflows like onboarding, compensation analysis, contract drafting, and payroll. Shapes says it has “hundreds of customers” across 79 countries and 14 industries, operating on a SaaS model with a flat rate per employee. The new capital will be used to more than double the company’s headcount over the next year and expand into new markets.
The app store for HR AI
Here’s the thing: the core idea isn’t just another AI chatbot for HR. Shapes is pitching a modular, almost Lego-like system. They call it “PeopleOS,” and the “app store” analogy is pretty apt. Instead of a monolithic software suite that does everything one way, companies can supposedly pick and choose the AI agents they need. Need one that monitors for flight risk by analyzing salary, performance, and attendance data? Install it. Want another to handle all the mundane paperwork for new hires? That’s a separate “app.” And they claim customers can even build their own bespoke tools using prompts, a method they compare to “vibe coding.” It’s a flexible approach, but that flexibility is also its biggest challenge.
The modular advantage and its pitfalls
CEO Arnon Nir says the modular nature is their key competitive advantage against giants like Workday or HiBob. “Every company works differently,” he argues. That makes sense on paper. But in practice, I think there’s a real tension here. HR is a function riddled with compliance, legal nuances, and complex, interconnected processes. Can a patchwork of best-of-breed AI agents truly handle that seamlessly? Or does it just create a new kind of integration nightmare? The promise is incredible customization. The risk is a fragmented, messy system where data doesn’t flow properly between agents, creating more work for humans to clean up. Getting that architecture right is the real technical hurdle, not just building the individual AI tools.
A crowded and shifting market
Let’s be clear: the HR tech space is brutally competitive and everyone is slapping “AI” on their product now. Shapes’ bet is that companies are so desperate for agility in the “AI era” that they’ll prefer a build-your-own-adventure platform. Co-founder Shirley Baumer talks about companies needing to “rethink its structure” and “find itself from scratch.” That’s a powerful narrative for a post-pandemic, cost-conscious world where hiring freezes and layoffs are common. The ability to scale tools up and down as workforce size changes is a compelling value proposition. But is it enough? They’ll be fighting for budget and attention against entrenched players who are also rapidly adding AI features. Their success will hinge on proving that their modular system isn’t just flexible, but also robust, secure, and paradoxically, simple to manage.
