Deel Inc., a fast-growing startup that helps companies hire remote workers and manage tasks such as payroll administration, has more than quadrupled its valuation in six months thanks to a $425 million funding round announced today.

San Francisco-based Deel is now worth $5.5 billion. That’s up from $1.25 billion in April, when the startup received $125 million from an investor group led by YC Continuity Fund. The new round that Deel announced today was led by Coatue. YC Continuity Fund took the opportunity to increase its stake, while Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Neo and Spark Capital chipped in as well.

The more than $4 billion that Deel has added to its valuation over the past six months is partly the result of the startup’s rapid growth. Deel says the number of organizations using its platform jumped from about 500 last September to 1,800 in April and stands at 4,500 today. Dropbox Inc., Shopify Inc. and Airtable Inc., another enterprise software startup that was valued at more than $5 billion recently, are among the companies using Deep’s platform.

Deel promises to help organizations hire workers around the world with a small fraction of the administrative work usually involved in the process. Local regulations often require companies to set up branch offices in the countries where they hire remote employees.

The task can take a considerable amount of time and effort. Deel spares its customers the hassle: The startup operates subsidiaries in dozens of countries through which it manages all hiring-related administrative work on behalf of the companies using its platform.

For human resource teams, Deel’s platform provides a dashboard that makes it possible to perform key payroll-related tasks through a single console. The platform can be used to pay workers in more than 120 local currencies. Companies also have the ability to grant stock options to employees.

To ease the day-to-day work of the teams using its platform, Deel offers connectors that can automatically sync records to a company’s other HR and accounting applications. The goal is to reduce manual data entry. Removing the need for workers to copy information manually across a company’s business applications not only boosts productivity but in theory also lowers the risk of errors.

Deel is currently developing an application programming interface with which it hopes to reduce manual work even further. According to the startup, the API will enable customers to build their own integrations with external applications to automate a larger number of HR tasks.

Another item on the startup’s agenda is to expand the number of countries where it operates subsidiaries to help customers hire local workers. Deel currently has 60 subsidiaries and, following the funding round announced today, intends to grow the number to 80 by year’s end. Alex Bouaziz, Deel’s co-founder and chief executive, wrote in a blog post that the startup also plans to expand its platform’s feature set by launching additional capabilities. 

“The way people work is fundamentally changing. And it’s never going back,” Bouaziz said. “We founded Deel because we didn’t want hiring or payments to prevent businesses from building the best global teams and finding the best global talent. We’re going to keep challenging the norms of how companies operate and continue building tools that shape the future of work.”

Deel has raised more than $630 million from investors since launching in 2019. Now that it’s worth $5.5 billion, Deel says, it’s the highest-valued startup in the global hiring, payments and compliance segment.

Image: Deel