Merger and Acquisation

Salesforce Acquires AI-Driven Recruiting Startup Moonhub to Strengthen AI Strategy

• ByStartupStory     |    June 4, 2025

In a move that further bolsters its commitment to artificial intelligence, Salesforce has acquired Moonhub, a Menlo Park-based AI-powered recruiting startup. While the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Moonhub confirmed that its entire team will be joining Salesforce.

“Today, we are excited to announce the Moonhub team will be joining Salesforce. By joining Salesforce, we are accelerating our mission in this next chapter. Moonhub’s talented team will play a key role in advancing Salesforce’s AI strategy, including Agentforce,” the company said in a statement posted on its website on Monday.

Founded in 2022 by Nancy Xu, a former Meta engineer and Stanford PhD student, Moonhub has quickly made a mark in the HR tech industry. Backed by notable investors such as Khosla Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Time Ventures, AIX Ventures, Day One Ventures, and Salesforce, the startup has raised $14.4 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Moonhub is best known for launching the world’s first AI Recruiter — a tool built to help startups and enterprises identify top-tier talent through intelligent automation. What sets Moonhub apart is its approach to AI in hiring: designed with a “human-in-the-loop” philosophy, the platform ensures that while AI aids the process, final decisions rest with people.

Xu, who has spoken frequently about the risks of bias in AI, envisioned Moonhub as a counter to flawed traditional recruiting systems. Her company’s AI models avoid demographic filtering and instead build holistic candidate profiles using data from across the public web — including LinkedIn, GitHub, and personal websites.

Moonhub’s AI is capable of analyzing nuanced patterns, such as career progression indicators like multiple promotions, from unstructured data sources. Instead of promising diversity quotas, Moonhub focuses on surfacing qualified candidates who might be overlooked due to outdated or rigid filters.

Xu started developing the core idea for Moonhub while at Stanford’s AI Lab. Her vision has consistently been centered on ethical AI. She has emphasized in several forums that, “in most current AI applications, humans still play a critical role in final judgments, especially in areas like hiring.”

The acquisition signals Salesforce’s continued investment in expanding its AI capabilities across verticals. The Moonhub deal follows Salesforce’s recent $8 billion acquisition of cloud data management company Informatica on May 27 and the purchase of automation startup Converge.ai — all part of a larger push to scale its AI portfolio under the Agentforce banner.

Salesforce has been positioning itself as a leader in AI-driven enterprise solutions, and bringing in Moonhub’s technology and talent could offer significant value across its HR and CRM product lines.

Moonhub’s strategy to enhance AI-driven recruiting — by reducing machine bias and supporting more human-informed hiring decisions — aligns with Salesforce’s broader vision of trusted, ethical AI.

With this acquisition, Salesforce is expected to integrate Moonhub’s AI recruiting capabilities into its existing talent and HR solutions, potentially revolutionizing how businesses source and engage top talent.

Moonhub’s entire team, based in Menlo Park, California, will be absorbed into Salesforce as part of the transition.

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