The Hague-based Bubty, a world Freelance Administration System (FMS) startup, has been acquired by U.S.-based firm Upwork’s new enterprise-focused subsidiary to reshape how contingent work is sourced, managed, and delivered.
Bubty had beforehand raised a €1.7 million Seed spherical in December 2023, and one other €3 million Seed spherical in November 2024 – as coated by EU-Startups. Complete funding sits at €5.1 million, as per Crunchbase.
Lee Willoughby and Benjamin Schriel, Co-founders of Bubty, emphasised that the deal shouldn’t be the tip of their journey, however a scaling-up of their ambitions. “Collectively, with our unimaginable workforce, purchasers, companions, and supporters, we’ve constructed an organization that dared to rethink how the world hires. From the beginning, Bubty wasn’t simply an thought. It was a deep intrinsic perception. That work will be extra human. That hiring contingent expertise shouldn’t be difficult. That know-how can empower individuals, each purchasers and contractors, to attach, collaborate, and develop with readability, belief, and pleasure.”
Based in 2020, Bubty is an FMS designed to streamline how corporations work with freelancers worldwide. Its platform permits companies to construct and handle non-public expertise swimming pools, match the correct freelancers to tasks utilizing AI-driven insights, and deal with each stage of the method – from compliance and classification to funds in over 190 nations and 130 currencies by means of a single bill.
By addressing authorized dangers, misclassification points, and administrative workloads, Bubty seems to provide organisations a strategic edge in expertise acquisition and administration whereas guaranteeing velocity, accuracy, and tax compliance in international funds.
The acquisition was introduced alongside Upwork’s settlement to accumulate Ascen, a world compliance and employer of document firm. Each Bubty and Ascen will probably be built-in right into a stand-alone entity inside Upwork’s operations, designed to serve company purchasers on the lookout for versatile staffing options.
By combining capabilities, Upwork will have the ability to assist a greater diversity of contract varieties, together with agent of document, employer of document, and employees augmentation – positioning the corporate to compete in new areas of the staffing market.
Upwork reportedly vetted greater than 100 potential corporations to accumulate in an effort to construct out this enterprise. The corporate in the end selected Bubty and Ascen not just for what they might every provide individually but in addition for the way they labored collectively, having piloted each corporations independently and in collaboration earlier than the deal.
Whereas monetary particulars of the acquisition haven’t been disclosed, the strategic rationale is evident. For Upwork, this transfer strengthens its aggressive edge in enterprise workforce options. For Bubty, it offers the dimensions, assets, and market attain to carry its imaginative and prescient to a a lot bigger viewers.
In a public assertion, the Bubty Founders expressed deep gratitude to their workforce and group, promising that the values on which Bubty was constructed – belief, care, and innovation – will stay central as they be a part of forces with Upwork’s enterprise operations.
