Sacra estimates that Handshake hit $250M in annualized revenue in May 2025, with $50M from its data-labeling product Handshake AI (launched in January 2025).

Handshake operates two revenue streams: the core career platform business generates revenue through employer subscriptions, with approximately 1,200 paying customers, including 70% of the Fortune 100.

In early 2025, the company launched Handshake AI, a human data labeling business connecting domain experts with frontier AI labs for model training, which is targeting $100 million in annual run rate by the end of 2025.

Handshake raised $200 million in a Series F round in January 2022, led by Coatue Management and Valiant Peregrine Fund. The company has raised $434 million in total funding across multiple rounds.

Key investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, True Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, EQT Ventures, Base10 Partners, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GGV Capital, Omidyar Network, and Emerson Collective.

Handshake is a three-sided career platform connecting students, universities, and employers through a single integrated network. Students register using verified .edu email addresses and create profiles combining features of LinkedIn and TikTok, including scrollable feeds, short-form video content, and social networking tools designed for career exploration.

The platform supports 18 million students and alumni across 1,600 universities and community colleges. Users can browse job postings, participate in virtual career fairs, message recruiters directly, and follow curated collections of opportunities that surface relevant positions automatically.

Universities use institutional dashboards integrated with student information systems, enabling career services teams to manage job postings, host virtual events, track student outcomes, and communicate with employers through a centralized interface.

Employers access a marketplace to post jobs for free or subscribe to paid tiers offering advanced sourcing tools, targeted campaigns, and analytics. The platform prioritizes discovery over existing connections, making it effective for early-career recruiting where students typically lack extensive professional networks.

Handshake AI functions as a separate product, connecting domain experts from the university network with AI companies requiring specialized training data. PhDs and graduate students perform tasks such as creating step-by-step reasoning examples, ranking model outputs, and recording professional workflows to enhance AI model performance.

In September 2025, xAI laid off roughly 500 generalist human annotators—about a third of its data labeling team—underscoring how quickly companies can pivot from broad human labor pools to smaller groups of specialist AI tutors as model training shifts toward domain expertise and automation.

Handshake operates a B2B2C marketplace model in which universities function as the primary channel to access students. The company initially established partnerships with career centers at over 1,600 institutions and subsequently developed employer monetization based on that student network.

The primary business employs a subscription-based pricing structure for employers. While job postings are free, paid tiers include additional features such as candidate sourcing, targeted outreach campaigns, and detailed analytics. Enterprise customers sign annual contracts averaging $143,000, with 70% of Fortune 100 companies participating as paying customers.

The AI data business operates under a distinct model, connecting expert labor directly with AI labs for project-based work. Domain experts are compensated $60-125 per hour for tasks such as creating training examples, evaluating model outputs, and recording professional workflows. This segment benefits from minimal customer acquisition costs, as experts are drawn from the existing university network.

Revenue growth occurs through both customer acquisition and increased spending per customer. Employers often expand their use of premium features and raise their annual contract values as they observe measurable outcomes in early-career hiring. The AI business grows by scaling project volume and aligning specialized expertise with specific model training requirements.

The model generates network effects, where a larger student base attracts more employers, which in turn encourages additional universities to join in offering career opportunities to their students. The AI business similarly utilizes this network to provide a reliable source of expert labor, a capability that competitors find difficult to replicate.

LinkedIn remains the dominant platform in professional networking, primarily catering to experienced workers with established career histories. While the platform has introduced AI-powered career coaching and skills-matching tools to attract younger users, its core functionality continues to prioritize individuals with extensive work experience rather than students exploring early-career opportunities.

Indeed operates as a large-scale job board serving all career levels. Although the company has introduced AI job-matching tools and expanded its focus to early-career segments, it lacks the university partnerships and student-centric features that distinguish Handshake's campus recruiting model.

RippleMatch and WayUp focus on diversity recruiting and early-talent automation. These platforms provide lower-cost solutions with features designed to source underrepresented candidates and streamline campus recruiting workflows.

Yello offers event management and recruiting automation tools that overlap with Handshake's employer-facing capabilities. The company emphasizes cost efficiency and ROI measurement as a differentiator from Handshake's broader platform strategy.

Symplicity and PeopleGrove are established providers of career services software for universities. Both companies have added features such as AI resume review, experiential learning modules, and alumni mentoring to retain institutional contracts and compete with Handshake's expanding presence.

12twenty has secured several notable university migrations, including Southern Methodist University and UT Austin, by offering advanced analytics and campus-wide workflow integration. These features appeal to institutions seeking alternatives to Handshake's marketplace-oriented approach.

Scale AI leads the broader data labeling market but focuses on computer vision and autonomous vehicle applications rather than the expert-level language model training targeted by Handshake AI. The two companies address distinct segments within the AI training ecosystem.

Traditional data labeling marketplaces rely heavily on advertising and large outbound sales teams to recruit workers, resulting in higher customer acquisition costs and quality control challenges compared to Handshake's university-based expert network.

Handshake is developing AI interviewing and matching capabilities designed to increase revenue per employer customer. These tools include automated candidate screening, skills assessments via work simulations, and AI-driven job matching that extends beyond traditional resume-based screening.

The company can monetize these features through per-interview pricing, per-assessment fees, or premium subscription tiers incorporating advanced AI functionality. This approach shifts the revenue model from seat-based pricing to usage-based pricing that scales with hiring volume.

International markets present growth opportunities, particularly in regions with established university systems and structured campus recruiting practices. Handshake currently operates in Germany, France, and the UK, providing a foundation for further European expansion.

Emerging markets with growing higher education sectors offer longer-term potential as these economies adopt more sophisticated early-career recruiting practices and strengthen university-employer partnerships.

Small and medium-sized businesses represent an underpenetrated customer segment, with 35% of recent graduates now seeking roles at companies with fewer than 250 employees. Handshake could develop lightweight, self-serve products to make campus recruiting accessible to smaller employers that currently rely on generic job boards.

This expansion would require alternative pricing models and simplified onboarding processes. The total addressable market includes millions of US businesses, a significant increase compared to the current focus on larger enterprises.

The performance of Handshake AI highlights the potential of the platform's expert network beyond recruiting. The company could expand into adjacent areas such as consulting marketplaces, research collaboration platforms, or professional development services.

This diversification would reduce reliance on the recruiting market while utilizing the same university relationships and expert community that support both the core platform and AI data business.

University dependence: Handshake's business model depends heavily on partnerships with university career centers, creating concentration risk if institutions transition to competing platforms or internalize career services. Recent migrations to competitors such as 12twenty indicate that these partnerships are not guaranteed. Losing major university partners could materially affect both student user growth and employer customer acquisition.

AI commoditization: Advancements in AI capabilities may diminish demand for human-generated training data, which underpins Handshake AI's current revenue growth. As large language models increasingly generate synthetic training data or require less human feedback for optimization, the value of expert data labeling services could decline. This shift poses a risk to the sustainability of one of the company's fastest-growing revenue streams.

Economic sensitivity: Early-career hiring is often among the first areas reduced during economic downturns, as employers prioritize experienced hires and scale back entry-level roles. A recession could significantly reduce employer demand for Handshake's recruiting services while also straining university budgets for career services platforms, exerting pressure on both sides of the marketplace.