Icelandic HR Startup Just Raised $6M to Put AI Agents to Work

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-24

50skills, a Reykjavík-based startup that's building what it calls the operating system for people workflows, just raised €5.3 million ($6 million) to accelerate hiring in sales, marketing, and community, and to keep investing in its AI agents that work alongside HR teams. The round was co-led by Frumtak Ventures, Swiss Post Ventures, Avant, and American family office DRD Investments. Ásthildur Otharsdóttir, Partner at Frumtak Ventures and Chair of the 50skills board, put it this way: "50skills has turned years of customer feedback into a platform organisations run their people operations on every day. As AI changes how work gets done, the companies that win will be those that bring people, workflows and AI agents together safely and effectively. 50skills has the product, the domain expertise and the customer traction to lead that shift. We are proud to continue backing Kristján and the team." ### What exactly does 50skills do? Founded in 2017, the company is building infrastructure for people and AI agents to run processes together. HR teams use it to design and run the experience of their own employees across the organisation's existing systems. The platform combines deterministic workflows, AI agents, and human oversight with the governance and security that HR and people operations require. According to the company, HR teams manage hundreds of recurring processes, but many still depend on email, spreadsheets, and manual coordination across systems that were never designed to work together. 50skills claims to bring those processes into a single platform. The company notes that HR teams describe the process they want, and the platform turns that into an operational workflow connected to the systems the organisation already runs on. From there, automation handles predictable work, AI agents handle tasks requiring interpretation, and people remain in control of decisions requiring human judgment. ### The delicate balance of automation and human judgment Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson, co-founder and CEO of 50skills, explained: "AI is changing how organisations create value. Our job is to make that practical for the teams responsible for people. We are building the operating system for people workflows, where HR teams design the experience they want for their employees and the platform runs it. The hard part is the balance: deterministic workflows where a process has to run the same way every time, probabilistic agents where a step needs interpretation, and human oversight, governance and security throughout. For HR and people operators, that balance is not optional, it is the job. That is what we build, and this round lets us bring it to many more organisations." The company offers two products: Hire, an applicant tracking system, and Journeys, the AI-powered platform for building and running people processes. HR teams describe a process in plain language; the platform builds it, runs it, and keeps a complete record of every step. ### Traction and clients The Icelandic startup highlighted that its platform has been used to complete over 4 million actions in the past 12 months by HR teams in the Nordics and the UK. Notable clients include Icelandair, Eimskip, Blue Lagoon, Domino's, and Securitas, as well as public-sector bodies such as the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the City of Reykjavík, alongside a growing base of customers across the Nordics and the UK. With this fresh funding, 50skills plans to scale its team and further develop its AI capabilities, aiming to help more organisations streamline their HR operations and improve employee experiences.