AINA Raises $1M to Slash Time-to-Hire 80% with Fair AI Interviews, Challenging Hack & Jill
- ByStartupStory | January 15, 2026
AINA, the AI interview platform guaranteeing unbiased hiring decisions, has raised $1 million in seed funding to accelerate its mission of compressing recruitment cycles from weeks to hours while eliminating demographic bias plaguing traditional interviews.
The startup directly challenges Hack & Jill’s dominance by delivering structured interviews where AI avatars conduct identical question sets across candidates, scoring responses through patented fairness algorithms that anonymize gender, accent, and ethnicity markers. Recruiters receive instant shortlists ranked by competency rather than charisma.
Co-founders Priya Sharma and David Chen engineered AINA after experiencing firsthand how top performers from tier-2 colleges lost to silver-tongued peers during Big Tech interviews. Their platform guarantees 80% time savings – from sourcing to offer – while boosting diverse hire rates 3x through blind evaluation.
Early adopters across fintech, healthtech, and SaaS report 45% improvement in 90-day retention as cultural fit becomes competency-based rather than subjective chemistry. The capital fuels US and Southeast Asia expansion targeting mid-market firms graduating from Hack & Jill’s entry pricing.
AINA proves fair hiring scales when AI enforces interview rigor humans can’t sustain. When recruiters spend hours reviewing proven talent instead of parsing rambling answers, one million dollars unlocks billions in hiring productivity – leveling the arena where skills finally trump silver tongues.
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