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Human resource platform Employment Hero is on track to deliver its first full-year profit after solid growth in the first half of 2025 boosted the group’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $300 million.
The record ARR represents a tenfold increase for the Sydney-based Employment Hero over the past five years which is now delivering both EBITDA profitability on a monthly and year-to-date basis.
Employment Hero, which last year acquired Canadian employment platform Humi for $112 million, boosted ARR by $30 million in the first half of 2025 after growing its customer base to 350,000 businesses globally.
Founded in 2014 by Ben Thompson and Dave Tong, Employment Hero is an integrated employment solution platform used by small and medium-sized enterprises to support the employee lifecycle from recruitment to HR, compliance, payroll and employee engagement tools.
The company, which is backed by global online jobs platform SEEK (ASX: SEK), achieved double unicorn status in 2023 following a $263 million in a Series F growth round that has helped fuel the company’s rapid growth.
"When Dave Tong and I founded Employment Hero more than a decade ago, the goal was to create proud, confident employers who felt well equipped to employ, pay and manage their people – and we wanted to give small businesses a competitive edge,” says Thompson, the CEO of Employment Hero.
“Reaching $300 million in ARR while becoming profitable reflects the value we are delivering every day to the 350,000 businesses that use our platform.
“Looking ahead, our focus remains on simplifying employment and giving SMBs the infrastructure to operate at the same level as the world's largest companies."
After recording its first EBITDA-positive month in December last year, Employment Hero says it has since followed up with a positive year-to-date performance putting it on track for its first annual EBITDA-positive result.
The company notes that “few SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies globally combine this level of scale with sustained profitability”.
Employment Hero is backed by a suite of major investors including Australian venture capital group Airtree, an early-stage investor that has supported the company since 2016.
While SEEK Growth Fund sold down part of its stake in the company earlier this year for $95 million to US private equity giant KKR, the SEEK investment arm still retains “a meaningful stake” in Employment Hero.
"Employment Hero's growth to $300 million in ARR, alongside its achievement of profitability, reflects both the strength of its platform and the clarity of Ben Thompson's vision,” says Craig Blair, partner and founder at Airtree.
“The company has scaled to support hundreds of thousands of businesses across multiple markets and continues to expand its role as a leading employment operating system.
“We are pleased to continue our partnership with Employment Hero as it deepens its product offering and accelerates its global reach."
Employment Hero's growth has been supported by ties with LinkedIn and SEEK as major candidate sources, although in June this year SEEK sought to terminate API (Application Programming Interfaces) integration with Employment Hero following a review of the partnership.
Subsequent legal action by Employment Hero led to an interim agreement to allow Employment Hero to maintain the integration for the duration of the court case against SEEK which Thompson has previously acknowledged is a preferred option for many of his company’s clients.
Meanwhile, Employment Hero today revealed that it has secured an enhanced global integration with global jobs site platform Indeed which the company says is designed to give small businesses "the strongest possible footing in the competition for talent, helping them reach candidates more effectively while lowering the cost of hiring".
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