San Fran — Deel, the market leader in the global payroll and compliance space, announced today that it had joined forces with Zeitgold to fuel international growth and enhance the depth and breadth of its product offerings.
This acquisition marks a significant milestone for Deel as the company continues to scale, adding thousands of customers as working and hiring practices continue to transform rapidly. Deel is adding a full line of products through this acquisition to improve their customer experience further and provide them with the right solutions to scale internationally.
Deel enables businesses to hire anyone, anywhere, in a compliant manner. With Deel, hiring and onboarding international employees or contractors takes under 5 minutes, with no local entity required. Businesses can also pay their teams in 120+ currencies with just a click. In April 2021, Deel raised $156 million in Series C funding at a $1.25 billion valuation. With their new funding, Deel announced plans to continue international expansion, grow its team through mergers & acquisitions, hire exceptional talent globally, all while improving, building, and expanding its product offerings. The purchase of Zeitgold marks the first step in the company’s extensive M&A plans and reinforces its global payroll offering.
Zeitgold was founded in 2015 by Jan Deepen and Stefan Jeschonnek, co-founders of SumUp, the European fintech unicorn, and Kobi Eldar, a former senior intelligence officer of the prestigious 8200 Israeli unit. Zeitgold has raised over $60M from leading venture capital firms such as Battery Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, as well as insurance company AXA and Deutsche Bank. All existing Zeitgold investors will now be joining Deel as shareholders.
Zeitgold offers AI-powered payroll and automated bookkeeping software for businesses and contractors. The contractor product assists thousands of independent contractors with their setup, bookkeeping, and tax filing. Zeitgold’s highly skilled team and impressive track record have made it a gem of the German technology industry. With this purchase, Deel is adding senior leadership to its ranks and gains the expertise of Zeitgold’s team in global payroll, automation, and AI. The deal also provides valuable IP in global payroll processing based on a powerful workflow engine and document understanding AI stack, which Deel will leverage to scale up and serve hundreds of thousands of clients.
“With the addition of Zeitgold, we’ll accelerate even faster and reinforce our European leadership,” said Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz. “We’re taking Zeitgold’s best-in-class engine and plugging it into the core of our platform to help Deel supercharge its product offerings.”
“By joining forces with Deel, we can leverage our core technology and products at a global scale,” said Zeitgold CEO Jan Deepen. “The new capabilities we’re bringing to Deel will allow contractors and employees all over the world to stay compliant and take care of their payroll with confidence, all while continuing to help reduce hiring barriers worldwide.”
Deel was co-founded in 2018 by MIT alumni Bouaziz and Wang. The founders set out to solve a problem that most businesses worldwide found daunting—the ability to hire people from anywhere easily. In the past 12 months, the company grew by more than 1000% in revenue to support over 3,000 businesses worldwide. It has plans to set up 100 new Deel-owned entities across the world by the end of 2021. With the acquisition of Zeitgold, Deel plans to deploy this offering into every country where it operates, shattering hiring barriers worldwide.
