Seed

Mappa Raises $3.4M Seed Round to Transform Hiring With AI-Powered Behavioral Intelligence

Today, we’re proud to announce that Mappa has oversubscribed a $3.4M seed round led by Draper Associates, with participation from Serac Ventures, Riverwalk Capital, Sher Ventures, Seagrass, Angel Squad (Hustle Fund), Grão VC, SoGal Ventures, The Pitch, and AngelHub Mexico.

The challenge we are solving

Mappa is an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform designed to solve one of the most persistent problems in hiring: bias, inefficiency, and missed insights during candidate evaluation. Traditional interviews rely heavily on gut feel, résumé filters, and subjective impressions — approaches that often fail to reveal how someone will truly perform in high-stakes situations.

With Mappa, hiring teams can see beyond the résumé. Our platform decodes more than 30 vocal biomarkers — from pitch variability and speech rate to the use of action-oriented verbs and noun density — to assess communication style, ownership, empathy, and confidence. In under 60 seconds, Mappa analyzes over 100,000 behavioral data points, delivering predictive insights that help employers make smarter, faster, and fairer hiring decisions.

Why Mappa?

Mappa was founded by Sarah Lucena, Pablo Bergolo and Daniel Moretti. Sarah, a former analytics marketer turned AI entrepreneur from Brazil. She’s one of fewer than 50 Latin American women globally to lead an AI company, and among a rare dozen to have raised more than $1M in venture capital. In less than two years, Sarah has taken Mappa from concept to multimillion dollarsM annual recurring revenue and 100+ enterprise clients across the U.S. and LATAM.

Pablo, 2x Founder, with one exit under his belt, brings deep analytical expertise to our operations. With 10+ years of experience in statistics and econometrics enable him to transform complex data into actionable business insights and models.

Daniel, medical student turned software engineer, Daniel has 10+ years of experience across Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, and AI. A University of London alum, he’s built 25+ applications and brings a rare blend of technical depth and human insight.

Why now?

In under two years, Mappa grew to over 6 digits in annual recurring revenue, fully bootstrapped. But as we looked closely at the market, particularly in the U.S. the opportunity became impossible to ignore. Recruitment and talent retention challenges are intensifying, costing organizations time, money, and momentum. In the age of speed, not having the right people fast kills businesses.

We saw a clear path to help far more companies tackle these problems head-on. This funding gives us the ability to scale faster, expand our reach, and deepen the behavioral intelligence that’s already transforming hiring for our customers. It’s not just about growing Mappa — it’s about amplifying the impact we can have on how organizations find, evaluate, and keep great talent that are compatible with their culture, vision and expectations.

Real impact

We’ve built a proprietary AI stack and data models that process over 100,000 behavioral data points and layers them with public information to create multidimensional profiles that predict both performance and cultural alignment before a hire is even made.Key platform capabilities include:

Behavioral decoding in under 60 seconds, analyzing over 100,000 vocal data points to assess how candidates handle pressure, feedback, and ambiguity
Proprietary multi-layer AI stack integrating voice biomarkers with public data for multidimensional candidate profiles
Action-oriented language analysis, identifying verb usage, noun density, and first-person markers to evaluate initiative, accountability, and cognitive focus
Continuous learning through RNN-powered models, improving match accuracy with every interaction and feedback loop
Two-sided analysis - profiling both candidates and companies to ensure deep cultural and behavioral alignment
Enterprise-grade integrations with Airtable, Notion, Excel, and more, embedding behavioral intelligence directly into existing workflows

Customer thesis

For K2, a leading financial services and fintech innovation agency, the impact of Mappa was felt almost instantly. In an environment where hiring speed can determine the success of a project and team chemistry is non-negotiable, K2 needed to know how candidates would actually show up under pressure, navigate competing priorities, and work across disciplines.

“Mappa gave us immediate clarity on how candidates respond to pressure, take ownership, and communicate across functions. We’ve gone from interviewing to same-day job offers. It’s now an essential part of our hiring stack,” said Jacky Korn, Founder & CEO, K2.”

K2’s experience is far from unique. Across industries, companies are using Mappa to strip away the guesswork that has long defined hiring. Our platform replaces instinct-driven decisions with precise behavioral insights, making it possible to move faster without compromising on fit or quality.

The results speak for themselves:

<1 minute

Behavioral decoding and compatibility scoring, giving hiring teams the confidence to act decisively.

$30,000+

Savings per hire by minimizing costly turnover and improving retention.

300+ hours

Reclaimed per role through streamlined, data-driven decision-making.

The benefit isn’t just operational efficiency. It’s the ability to build teams that fit seamlessly into a company’s culture, contribute from day one, and stick around to make a lasting impact.

Investor thesis

For Mappa’s investors, the decision to back the company was driven by both timing and technology. The hiring landscape is undergoing a structural shift: enterprises are expected to fill roles faster, retain talent longer, and operate with leaner teams — all while navigating a job market defined by rapid change and heightened competition. Traditional hiring methods have failed to keep pace, relying on surface-level qualifications and subjective impressions that leave too much to chance.

“Resumes tell you the highlights of what someone has done — Mappa AI shows you how they’ll perform in the real world,” said Tim Draper, Founding Partner, Draper Associates. “By turning live, behavior-based data into hiring signals, Mappa is giving companies a smarter way to spot talent, build stronger teams, and uncover the next generation of leaders.”

The broader market signals are equally compelling. Talent acquisition and retention now rank among the top operational risks for executives in nearly every sector. The cost of a bad hire can reach six figures, while turnover can ripple across teams and slow growth. At the same time, the availability of AI tools capable of delivering real-time, high-accuracy behavioral insights is aligning with a buyer mindset ready for adoption.

What’s Next?

This raise is more than capital — it’s fuel to scale our mission: enabling connections to succeed, every time.

Mappa helps organizations to make their most critical people decisions with speed, precision, and fairness. We’re expanding our go-to-market and technical teams, accelerating R&D for more nuanced behavioral analytics, and deepening integrations with enterprise workflows so behavioral intelligence can become a standard layer in hiring worldwide.

If you’re building a team and want to reduce bias, cut time-to-hire, and improve retention, we’d love to talk. The future of connections is measurable and it’s here.