Syndio makes first acquisition, betting on agentic AI to transform pay equity decisions

Syndio bets on agentic AI with first acquisition in Seattle pay equity startup's history

For the first time in its nine-year history, Syndio has made an acquisition. The Seattle-based pay equity startup announced Tuesday that it acquired Embrace.ai, an agentic AI startup whose founders and technology will help Syndio build out its AI-powered compensation platform. Austin, Texas-based Embrace.ai was built to deploy AI-driven automation across business workflows, with a focus on governance and explainability in enterprise settings. The full team, led by co-founders Derek Butts and Seth Halpern, will join Syndio's product and go-to-market organization, according to a news release. Terms of the deal were not revealed. Syndio, which works with nearly 400 global enterprises including more than half the Fortune 100, has been pushing beyond pay equity compliance reporting into what it calls "Decision Intelligence for Pay" -- helping companies govern compensation decisions in real time, from job offers to merit cycles. "Pay decisions are among the most important decisions a company makes, and they require AI that understands the domain, data, and governance expectations of the enterprise," Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said in a statement. "That expertise will help us move significantly faster as we build the next generation of pay intelligence." In a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, Colacurcio called the acquisition a "bold bet," noting that the Embrace.ai team has spent three years deploying agentic AI inside real enterprises. "You do not hire that one role at a time," she wrote. "When you find a whole team that already has it, you move." She also said that she's spent the year digging into tools, sitting alongside engineers and understanding what it actually takes to move faster, noting, "It has changed how I show up in every product conversation we have." The addition of the Embrace.ai team is expected to accelerate Syndio's agentic AI roadmap, expand its AI-native technical depth, and strengthen governance and explainability for complex compensation decisions -- areas that Syndio says are increasingly in demand from large employers. Syndio was founded in 2017 by data scientist and law professor Zev Eigen to help companies analyze and address pay equity. Colacurcio, who previously co-founded workplace collaboration company Smartsheet, joined in 2018. The company raised $50 million in a Series C round in 2021, bringing its total funding to $83 million. Syndio is ranked No. 48 on the GeekWire 200 index of the Pacific Northwest's top startups. Both Embrace.ai founders are veterans of Workday, the enterprise human capital management giant. Butts spent 13 years there in product marketing, corporate strategy and M&A, and will join Syndio as SVP of product strategy. Halpern led global sales operations at Workday and WP Engine, and will join as a strategic advisor. "Every pay decision carries consequences for the employee and the employer," Butts said in a statement, "so AI has to be accurate, understand deep context, and support, not replace, human judgment."

Syndio Accelerates Agentic AI Roadmap With Embrace.ai Buy | PYMNTS.com

The Syndio platform already helps global organizations analyze, govern and improve pay decisions at scale, and the addition of Embrace.ai's AI-forward team will help it expand the platform with new agentic capabilities, Syndio said in a Tuesday (June 23) press release. Embrace.ai focuses on agentic AI and was built to deploy AI-driven automation across business workflows, according to the release. Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said in the release that pay decisions require AI that understands enterprises' domain, data and governance expectations. "The Embrace.ai team was built around exactly that principle," Colacurcio said. "They bring a governance-first approach to enterprise AI and deep operating experience helping organizations configure, control and deploy AI agents with appropriate guardrails. That expertise will help us move significantly faster as we build the next generation of pay intelligence." Embrace.ai's full team will join Syndio's product and go-to-market organization. Embrace.ai Co-CEO and Co-Founder Derek Butts will join Syndio as senior vice president of product strategy, while Co-CEO and Co-Founder Seth Halpern will join the company as a strategic adviser, according to the release. "We are excited to combine what we learned at Embrace.ai, building and delivering an AI-native platform, with Syndio's leadership in driving pay decisions for global enterprises," Butts said in the release. Syndio Chief Financial Officer Milan Parikh told PYMNTS in an interview posted in January 2023 that the company built its platform to help companies achieve transparency around workplace equity by leveraging digital technology and software to give organizations continuous insights and analysis to monitor the impact of their employee payroll spend tracked against equity key performance indicators (KPIs). Syndio announced in May that it rebranded its platform as Decision Intelligence for Pay and that it added a new AI-powered product called Decisions that puts real-time pay intelligence into the hands of the people making pay decisions. When announcing the addition of Decisions, Colacurcio said that compliance reports are not the real problem. "The real problem is pay governance at the point of decision, and governing it well is one of the most tangible financial advantages an enterprise has," Colacurcio said.