UAE-Based HRtech Qureos Pockets US$5 Million Seed Round

UAE-founded artificial intelligence (AI)-driven hiring platform Qureos has bagged US$5 million in a seed funding round as it looks to address one of the most persistent bottlenecks in recruitment: time to hire.  

The round, which was led by Netherlands-based venture capital (VC) firm Prosus Ventures and the MENA-focused Oryx Fund by Salica Investments, also saw participation from investors like Dubai-based Oraseya Capital, UAE-based Plus VC (+VC), Cairo-based F6 Ventures, California-based BDev Ventures, Japan-based Sunny Side Venture Partners, and Daniel Tyre, an early HubSpot executive who supported the company’s growth through its initial public offering. Existing investors, UAE-based COTU Ventures and Beirut-based Globivest, also took part. 

Founded by Alex Epure and Usama Nini in the UAE in 2021, Qureos supports human resources teams by automating sourcing, screening, and interviewing to help organizations hire faster at scale while improving decision quality and the candidate experience. In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Epure explained that the company’s direction was shaped by the founders’ observations as they worked closely with hiring teams as organizations scaled. “As companies source talent across more channels and markets, the volume of applicants per role has exploded," Epure said. "That should be a good thing, but in practice, it creates a different problem. Recruiters are overwhelmed with applications, resumes contain limited and often outdated signals, and identifying the right candidates becomes increasingly inefficient.” 

In large-scale hiring environments, manual application reviews and early-stage interviews can take up to 15 hours per role, amounting to an estimated 2,160 hours annually. By automating these steps, the company aims to increase recruiter capacity while reducing operational strain, particularly in markets with localization and nationalization requirements. However, Queros is not just about automation; in fact, the team wanted to rethink how hiring systems are structured. Rather than addressing individual stages in isolation, Qureos was built around a more unified model.

“We saw that hiring wasn’t broken because of volume alone," Epure explained. "It was broken because it was treated as a sequence of disconnected steps across sourcing, screening, and interviewing, with little intelligence connecting them. Our mission at Qureos is to turn hiring into a single, learning system that continuously improves with every cycle. By combining a deep integration layer across job boards and sourcing channels with AI-driven enrichment, screening, and interviews, Qureos helps organizations move faster without compromising quality, while giving candidates clarity, direction, and a fairer experience across the job market. What makes Qureos different from traditional applicant tracking system platforms is that it does not just manage hiring workflows. It actively adapts sourcing strategies, evaluates candidate fit beyond the resume, and improves outcomes over time based on real hiring results.” 

At the center of the platform is Iris, Qureos’ AI assistant, which supports interactions on both sides of the hiring process. For employers and recruitment agencies, Iris automates sourcing, screening, and interviewing, distributing roles across more than 2,000 job boards globally, as well as social and direct channels. Candidate profiles are enriched using publicly available data and prediction models, then screened against role requirements in under 15 seconds. Shortlisted candidates complete artificial intelligence-led interviews delivered via audio or video and tailored to each role. The platform integrates with applicant tracking systems and human resources information systems such as SAP SuccessFactors and Oracle, while also operating as a standalone solution. 

For candidates, Qureos matches individuals to relevant roles across a network of more than 100 partner companies, including Nestle, DP World, and Careem. The company says candidates using the platform receive responses from recruiters three times faster and increase their chances of being hired tenfold, while also receiving role-specific feedback to support their applications. Today, Qureos is used by teams across more than 1,000 enterprise and public sector organizations, including Qatar Airways, Dubai Economy and Tourism, BAAN Holdings, and Union Properties. 

The company’s pairing of scale and quality became particularly relevant during Qureos’ fundraising process, as investors looked for evidence that the platform was solving a meaningful business challenge at scale. “The biggest milestone was proving that time to hire is not just an efficiency metric, but a competitive advantage," Epure said. "We consistently saw customers compress hiring timelines from months to weeks, and in some cases to as little as six days, particularly in high-volume and time-sensitive roles. Another key milestone was demonstrating that speed did not come at the expense of quality. By automating sourcing, screening, and interviewing, we were able to help teams handle significantly higher volumes while improving consistency and decision-making. That combination of speed, quality, and scalability was critical in showing investors that this was not incremental software, but infrastructure-level change in how hiring operates. Finally, adoption by enterprise and public sector organizations across the region validated that this wasn’t a niche solution, but something that could be deployed in complex, real-world hiring environments.” 

As Qureos prepares to expand into additional geographies, including the US, understanding how hiring dynamics differ across regions has become a key part of its growth planning.  “While hiring challenges are universal, the way they manifest varies significantly by market," Epure said. "In the GCC, for example, enterprises often face high-volume hiring combined with localization and nationalization requirements, which increases complexity and pressure on timelines. It is not uncommon for time to hire in these environments to stretch beyond 60 days without automation.” 

By contrast, more mature markets present a different set of constraints. “In the US, hiring teams often struggle with fragmented systems and slow coordination across stakeholders, leading to similarly long hiring cycles despite access to larger talent pools," Epure noted. "Across markets where Qureos is deployed, we consistently see organizations reduce time to hire from weeks or months to under two weeks, and in some cases to as little as six days. As Qureos expands into the next phase of growth, including the United States, our go-to-market focus remains on organizations hiring at scale, where speed, consistency, and execution quality directly impact business performance. The platform’s ability to integrate with existing systems or operate standalone allows us to adapt to regional differences without changing the core product.” 

As automation becomes more deeply embedded in recruitment workflows, Epure stressed that while technology will help accelerate processes and improve efficiency, some matters will continue to rely on HR and recruitment teams. “Human judgment remains essential in hiring, particularly when it comes to final decisions, assessing cultural fit, and building trust with candidates and hiring managers," he said. "Those are areas where experience, context, and relationships matter, and they should remain firmly in human hands. Where recruiters benefit from letting go is the heavy manual workload that sits before those moments. Reviewing hundreds of applications, coordinating repetitive first interviews, and switching between disconnected tools consumes most of a recruiter’s time today without adding proportional value. Qureos is designed as a recruiter assistant, not an autopilot. The platform uses AI to handle sourcing, screening, and structured interviews at scale, providing recruiters with richer, more relevant shortlists and insights. Human judgment then comes in where it matters most, enabling recruiters to focus on engagement, evaluation, and decision-making rather than administration.” 

That balance between automation and human input is also shaping how Epure sees hiring teams evolving over time. “Over the next three to five years, we expect enterprise hiring teams to become significantly more efficient and far more relationship-driven," he said. "As automation takes over repetitive and administrative work, recruiters will shift away from being task-oriented operators toward roles that resemble strategic partners to the business. Recruiters will spend more time engaging candidates earlier, building long-term relationships, and clearly communicating why their organization is the right choice. At the same time, they will work more closely with business leaders to deeply understand role requirements from the outset, reducing misalignment and the costly resets that often slow hiring today. In this model, technology provides the operational backbone, while recruiters focus on judgment, alignment, and trust. Hiring teams that make this transition will move faster, make better decisions, and compete more effectively for top talent.” 

Pictured in the lead image are Qureos co-founders Usama Nini and Alex Epure. Image courtesy Qureos.