Education Technology · Profile from Education Technology Research Companion
Handshake
The college career network that replaced legacy career-services software on most US campuses and became the default way employers recruit students and new graduates. In 2025 it "refounded" itself around Handshake AI, selling expert human data from its network of students and PhDs to frontier AI labs, a business that third parties estimate quickly outgrew the original one (verify).
At a glance
- Founded
- 2014, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan
- Founders
- Garrett Lord (CEO), Ben Christensen, Scott Ringwelski
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California (offices also in Denver, London and Berlin, reported)
- Ownership / structure
- Private, venture-backed
- Leadership (2026)
- Garrett Lord, co-founder and CEO
- Segment and buyer
- Higher ed and early-career recruiting: employers pay for recruiting tools, universities use it as career-services infrastructure, and students use it for free. Since 2025, AI training data: frontier AI labs pay for expert-generated data and evaluations
- Scale
- ~1,500 partner colleges and universities, ~18–20m students and young alumni, ~1m employers including the Fortune 500 (company claims). AI business estimated at ~$1bn annualized gross revenue by April 2026, with total run-rate ~$1.1bn (Sacra/Dealroom estimates; verify)
- Capital raised / valuation
- ~$434m raised across ~7 rounds (reported); last priced round $200m Series F at $3.5bn (January 2022); no new priced round confirmed for 2025–26 (verify)
- Signature moves
- Free-to-students campus network (2014–16); employer premium product (2018); virtual career fairs (2020); Series E unicorn round (2021); $3.5bn Series F and Talentspace acquisition (2022); Handshake AI "refounding" (2025)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2014
Founding at Michigan Tech
Launch
2016
Campus Land Grab Series A
Funding round / distribution
2018
Employer Premium Monetization
Pricing change
2020
Virtual Career Fairs
Launch
2021
Series E and Student Network
Funding round / launch
2022
Series F 3 5bn
Funding round
2022
Talentspace Europe Expansion
Acquisition
2025
Handshake AI Training Data
Pivot / AI launch