REYKJAVÍK, 24th September: 50skills, the AI operating system for people workflows, has raised a $6 million funding round co-led by Frumtak Ventures, Swiss Post Ventures, Avant, and American family office DRD Investments. The funding will accelerate hiring across sales, marketing and community, alongside continued investment in the platform, including the AI agents that work alongside HR teams.
50skills is building the infrastructure for people and AI agents to run processes together. The company was co-founded by CEO Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson, who founded Iceland’s first startup accelerator (Startup Reykjavik), previously served as CEO of business accelerator Icelandic Startups, and ex-VP at digital banking platform Meniga.
Founded in Iceland, 50skills works with many of the country's largest employers and best-known brands, including Icelandair, Eimskip, Blue Lagoon, Domino's, and Securitas, and 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.
Millions of actions have run on the platform: onboarding tasks, contracts and signatures, employee requests and approvals, background checks, equipment and access, and the coordination that used to pull HR teams away from their people. 50skills users have already reported:
Research from Deloitte found that HR departments can spend up to 57% of their time on administrative and routine tasks. Meanwhile, the Society for Human Resource Management's State of AI in HR 2026 revealed that 67% of respondents lacked awareness of AI's capabilities, while 38% cited a lack of resources as a barrier to adoption. 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 brings those processes into a single platform. 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 the predictable work, AI agents handle tasks requiring interpretation, and people remain in control of decisions that require human judgment.
In practice, that means AI that is practical for HR teams, workflows go live in days rather than months, fewer errors, faster turnaround and a better experience for employees.
50skills co-founder and CEO, Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson: "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."
Avant co-founder Jon Jonsson: “The limit on AI in the workplace is no longer capability, it is trust. Nowhere is that more true than in HR, where a mistake lands on a person's contract, pay or career. 50skills has built a platform where every step is visible, every action is recorded, and a human decides where judgment is needed. We think that is where this category gets decided.”
Frumtak Ventures Partner and Chair of the 50skills board, Ásthildur Otharsdóttir: "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."
50skills is building the operating system for people workflows. HR teams use it to design and run the experience of their own employees across the organisation's existing systems, combining deterministic workflows, AI agents and human oversight with the governance and security that HR and people operations require. 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. 50skills is headquartered in Reykjavík, Iceland, with an office in Stockholm, and is backed by Swiss Post Ventures, Frumtak Ventures, Avant, and DRD Investments.
Frumtak Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Reykjavík, Iceland. Founded in 2008 and now investing from its fourth fund, Frumtak partners with exceptional founders building category-defining companies with global ambitions. frumtak.is
Avant is an Icelandic investment company that invests in 50skills on behalf of a group of experienced private investors and entrepreneurs.
DRD Investments, LLC is a family office based in Naples, FL and Williamstown, MA focused on managing a hedge fund, real estate, venture capital and various other financial assets for the Dion family.
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