Artificial intelligence is reshaping how organizations identify talent, understand markets, evaluate leadership, and make critical business decisions. Hunt Scanlon Ventures has been investing behind that transformation, backing emerging platforms that apply AI and proprietary intelligence to some of the most complex decisions facing executive search firms, investors, and corporate leaders. Evan Berta, an associate at Hunt Scanlon Ventures, examines the firm’s investments in Verata, HelloSky, and most recently, millionways, and the broader investment thesis connecting all three.
Hunt Scanlon Ventures (HSV) has spent the last several years building an investment portfolio around a central conviction: as AI becomes embedded across the human capital and private markets ecosystem, the greatest opportunities will extend beyond automation and productivity.
The next generation of platforms, according to Hunt Scanlon, will increasingly help organizations make better decisions – about markets, candidates, leadership, behavior, and ultimately enterprise value. That thesis has taken shape through three investments: Verata, an AI-driven market intelligence platform originally developed for private equity; HelloSky, an AI-powered talent intelligence platform purpose-built for executive search; and millionways, a behavioral intelligence company developing an AI layer designed to understand human motives, behavior, and context.
While the platforms address different problems, they share a common thread. Each applies AI and data to areas where traditional decision-making has historically depended heavily on manual research, fragmented information, experience, and human judgment.
From Market Intelligence to Talent Intelligence
HSV’s investment strategy began taking shape in 2023 with its participation in a funding round for Verata. The company developed an AI-driven market intelligence platform designed to automate competitor analysis and market research, particularly for private equity firms.
At the time of HSV’s investment, Verata was piloting its technology with three large-cap PE firms representing approximately $300 billion in combined assets under management (AUM) and had generated demo interest from more than 70 private equity firms. The platform used large language models to compile and analyze information that traditionally required teams of analysts and significant amounts of time to assemble.
“Verata gave us an early view into how generative AI could fundamentally change knowledge-intensive workflows,” said Scott A. Scanlon, CEO of Hunt Scanlon Ventures who serves as head of portfolio for the Greenwich-based business. “The opportunity wasn’t simply to make research faster. It was to give investors better access to intelligence at the moment they were making important decisions.”
That thesis moved directly into human capital with HSV’s investment in HelloSky, a next-generation talent intelligence platform built specifically for executive-level recruiting. Unlike recruiting technology designed primarily for high-volume hiring, HelloSky focuses on leadership searches, combining dynamic market mapping, candidate intelligence, behavioral analytics, and AI-powered ranking capabilities.
HelloSky had surpassed $1 million in annual recurring revenue when it launched a $5.5 million seed round to deepen its engineering capabilities and accelerate commercial growth. HSV participated alongside investors from the executive search and broader AI ecosystem, joining the cap table in 2025.
AI Moves Deeper Into Executive Search
HelloSky illustrates a broader shift underway across executive recruiting, a key market that HSV’s adjacent business, Hunt Scanlon Media, has been tracking for nearly four decades. “Search firms have historically built competitive advantage through consultant expertise, proprietary networks, research capabilities, and accumulated market knowledge. AI is increasingly creating another layer around those strengths,” said Mr. Scanlon.
“Executive search is ultimately an intelligence business. AI gives firms an opportunity to organize enormous amounts of market and candidate information more effectively.”
HelloSky’s SmartRank technology, market mapping capabilities, and ATS integrations are designed to help recruiters identify and evaluate leadership talent across a unified platform. “For HSV, the investment reflects a belief that AI will augment rather than eliminate the expertise underlying high-stakes executive recruiting,” said HSV managing director Drew Seaman.
“Executive search is ultimately an intelligence business,” he added. “AI gives firms an opportunity to organize enormous amounts of market and candidate information more efficiently; but the real value comes when that intelligence strengthens the judgment of experienced recruiters and advisors.”
That distinction is important. Leadership hiring involves context that cannot easily be reduced to a résumé or database match. Understanding a candidate’s relevance requires evaluating experience, trajectory, organizational fit, leadership capabilities, and the specific circumstances surrounding a client’s needs.
As AI improves the discovery and intelligence layers surrounding executive talent, the competitive advantage may increasingly shift toward firms that can combine technology with deeper human judgment.
Behavioral Intelligence Adds Another Layer
HSV’s just-announced investment in millionways extends that thesis further – from understanding markets and identifying talent toward understanding the people themselves.
millionways is developing behavioral intelligence around its proprietary Large Psychology Model, Thorsten-4. Built on more than a decade of psychological research and development and 35 million tagged words of behavioral data, the technology analyzes human interactions to identify patterns involving motivation, communication, behavior, and interpersonal dynamics.
“The next leap in AI isn’t another model that knows more. It’s AI that understands people better,” said Max Weidemann, co-founder and CTO of millionways. “We built millionways to give AI that missing layer: a scientifically grounded, explainable understanding of human motives, behavior and context. Hunt Scanlon immediately understood why that becomes critical as humans and AI agents increasingly work together,” he said.
The technology has applications across executive hiring, leadership assessment, succession planning, talent management, and organizational decision-making. “As humans increasingly work alongside intelligent agents, we believe the ability to understand behavioral context will become increasingly important to both talent decisions and broader enterprise performance,” said Mr. Scanlon.
“We see the ability to translate human behavior into actionable business intelligence as increasingly important across the human capital markets,” said Mr. Scanlon. “Those are not small efficiency gains. Those are enterprise value levers. As investors, that is exciting to us,” he added.
From Productivity to Decision Intelligence
Taken together, the three investments illustrate how HSV’s AI thesis has evolved.
Verata applies AI to market intelligence and research. HelloSky brings AI into talent discovery, mapping, and executive search. millionways moves further into behavioral intelligence, seeking to provide technology with a deeper understanding of the human context underlying decisions and interactions.
“As foundational AI models become increasingly commoditized, the intelligence built around them becomes more valuable.”
“That progression mirrors what is happening across AI more broadly,” said Mr. Seaman. “Early on, AI centered heavily on automating tasks and generating content. Now we see it increasingly focused on supporting higher-value decisions while remaining grounded in reliable data, domain expertise, and human judgment,” he noted.
“As foundational AI models become increasingly commoditized, the intelligence built around them becomes more valuable,” said Mr. Scanlon. “The opportunity we see is in platforms that apply AI to highly specialized problems where better information, deeper context, and stronger human judgment can materially improve outcomes.”
Hunt Scanlon has a Distinctive Edge in the Market
That investment philosophy also reflects HSV’s unique position within the human capital market. The firm operates at the intersection of M&A advisory, executive search, private capital, talent technology, and market intelligence, providing a vantage point into where technology is changing both business models and client expectations.
Related: 2026 Mid-Year M&A Report
“Hunt Scanlon Ventures is pairing capital with access to the executive search and leadership advisory market,” said Jesse Landry, the founder of DevCuration, a media outlet delivering funding intelligence and high-signal tech stories to the ecosystem’s builders, operators, and investors. That blend of investment banking proficiency and media expertise gives Hunt Scanlon a distinctive edge in the market.
AI adoption across executive search and human capital remains early, but the direction is becoming clearer. Research workflows are accelerating. Talent mapping is becoming more dynamic. Behavioral data is creating new and highly disruptive ways to assess leadership. And increasingly sophisticated platforms are giving firms access to intelligence that historically required substantial manual effort to produce.
The common denominator across HSV’s three investments is therefore not AI alone. It is the application of AI to decisions where information, people, and judgment intersect.
For Hunt Scanlon Ventures, that represents a broader investment opportunity. As AI becomes ubiquitous, differentiation may increasingly come from the proprietary data, specialized intelligence, and domain expertise layered on top of foundational technology.
Verata, HelloSky, and millionways approach that opportunity from different directions. Together, they represent HSV’s evolving thesis around where AI can create value across human capital and private markets – and why the next generation of talent platforms may be defined not simply by what their technology can automate, but by how much better it can help people understand, evaluate, and decide.
Article By
Evan Berta
Evan Berta is Editor-in-Chief of ExitUp, the investment blog from Hunt Scanlon Ventures designed for professionals across the human capital M&A sector. Evan serves as an Associate for Hunt Scanlon Ventures, specializing in data analysis, market mapping, and target list preparation.
