Brand Intelligence Graph
Company Overview
About Karat
Karat is a Seattle, Washington-based technical interviewing platform — backed with $248 million in total funding including a $110 million Series C in April 2022 led by Salesforce Ventures and Serena Williams at a $1.1 billion valuation — providing enterprise technology companies and growth-stage startups with an outsourced technical interview service that deploys a global network of expert interview engineers (experienced software engineers who conduct interviews as a service) to conduct first-round technical interviews at scale, reducing time-to-hire and expanding diverse talent pipelines through standardized, bias-reduced interview methodology. Serving major tech companies, Karat acquired Triplebyte's adaptive assessment technology in March 2023, adding automated skills verification capabilities to its expert-led interview service.
Business Model & Competitive Advantage
Karat's interviewing cloud platform addresses the engineering capacity constraint that limits technical hiring throughput at fast-growing technology companies: companies hiring 100-500 engineers per year need their senior engineers to conduct first-round technical interviews — but asking senior engineers (earning $200,000-$400,000 annually) to spend 4-8 hours per week interviewing consumes expensive, high-value engineering time that could be spent on product development. Karat's model (trained interview engineers who specialize in conducting technical screens for Java, Python, JavaScript, data science, and system design) outsources the first-round interview to specialists — while Karat's proprietary scoring technology (normalized scoring that benchmarks candidate performance across all Karat-evaluated candidates) provides the comparative performance data that hiring managers use to make consistent, bias-reduced selection decisions. The rich candidate performance data (code output, problem-solving approach, communication quality across multiple technical domains) enables more nuanced hiring decisions than binary pass/fail assessments.
Competitive Landscape 2025–2026
In 2025, Karat competes in the technical interviewing, talent assessment, and HR technology market with HackerRank (technical assessment, $58M raised), Codility (technical interview platform, $22M raised), and CoderPad (live coding interviews, $30M raised) for enterprise engineering hiring organization technical interview outsourcing and assessment adoption. Salesforce Ventures' Series C leadership and Serena Williams' co-investment (Williams' VC arm focuses on diverse founder and workforce diversity investments) reflect both enterprise software market conviction and talent diversity thesis investment. The Triplebyte acquisition (March 2023) adds the automated skills credential technology that allows software engineers to pre-verify technical competency — creating a two-sided marketplace where pre-screened candidates can skip first-round interviews at Karat customer companies. The 2025 strategy focuses on growing enterprise contract value through the full-cycle interview service (expanding from first-round screening to full interview loop management), building the AI-assisted interview analysis for faster candidate evaluation, and expanding the candidate assessment platform to new technical domains.
Recent Activity
View all →Financial services engineering leaders are tasked with modernizing legacy systems, shipping new digital products, and navigating an AI revolution – all while competing with big tech and fast-growing startups for increasingly scarce engineering talent.  To better understand where FinServ engineering leaders are feeling the most pressure, Karat analyzed data from 303 CTOs, CIOs, VPs of […] The post The Biggest Engineering Hiring Challenges Financial Services Leaders Face in 2026 appeared first on Karat .
Material Event filed 2026-06-23
Google: What are Karat interview questions? Chances are, if you’ve taken a Karat interview, you’ve run a search like the example above. In fact, most candidates interviewing at any company will have scoured Leetcode, Reddit, Blind, Glassdoor, and other sites for clues on what questions they might be asked throughout the technical hiring process. At […] The post Karat Interview Questions, Explained appeared first on Karat .
Material Event filed 2026-06-17
Money20/20 Europe Recap (2026): Can you assess how engineers use AI credits? Agentic excitement, governance and more. The post Money20/20 Europe recap: the AI conversation turns serious appeared first on Karat .
Material Event filed 2026-06-04
CTOs, CIOs, and VPs of Engineering are under pressure. They’re being asked to scale AI-ready teams faster, modernize aging infrastructure, and do both with tighter budgets. Where you hire is now an important strategy, rather than just a recruiting decision. For years, hiring was concentrated in coastal cities. Now, AI transformation is reshaping the U.S. […] The post Best Emerging U.S. Cities to Hire Software Engineers in 2026 appeared first on Karat .
London is Europe’s largest market for software engineering talent and one of the world’s most significant hubs for enterprise technology. In Karat’s 2026 Top Cities for Engineering Talent report, London jumped up 14 spots from last year to rank 16th globally. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), London comes in second for elite […] The post London Engineering Talent 2026: Europe’s Largest Market for Software Engineers appeared first on Karat .
[This article was originally published in 2020, but has been updated to reflect the evolution of interviewing and what Karat technical interviews measure in the human + AI era.] Going back to the early days of Karat, reviewing candidate feedback has been one of the most important ways we gauge the consistency, accuracy, and fairness […] The post What do Karat technical interviews measure? appeared first on Karat .
Bangalore isn’t just India’s best market for software engineering talent. It’s one of the most important engineering hubs in the world. In Karat’s 2026 Top Cities for Engineering Talent report, it ranks #1 in India and #9 globally, with 27.3% of candidates performing in the top quartile worldwide. It also has the largest software engineering […] The post Bangalore Engineering Talent 2026: India’s #1 City for Software Engineers appeared first on Karat .
Material Event filed 2026-05-12
San Francisco and the larger Bay Area have long been the world’s most iconic engineering market. While many headlines over the last few years have reported on companies and tech workers leaving California for lower-cost markets like Texas, our data shows that San Francisco remains one of the world’s most concentrated and competitive markets for […] The post San Francisco Engineering Talent 2026: A Top 3 Global Hub for Software Engineers appeared first on Karat .
Key Differentiators
Strong Challenger
Karat is an established challenger with significant market presence and competitive offerings in HR Tech.
Growth Stage
Karat has achieved $110M in revenue, demonstrating strong product-market fit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Estimated Visibility Trend (Beta)
Simulated 8-week rolling score
Based on estimated brand signals. Historical tracking coming soon.
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