Dex

Dex is a London-based AI talent-matching company founded in early 2025, built on the premise that hiring machine-learning engineers requires different signals than traditional technical recruitment. Where generalist platforms optimise for volume, Dex uses AI-driven matching to place ML engineers with companies that need production-grade model work: clients include Granola (AI meeting notes), Synthesia (AI video generation) and ElevenLabs (AI voice synthesis), a portfolio of well-funded London AI companies that collectively validate the platform's niche. By April 2026, Dex had reached $1.8 million in annualised recurring revenue, which is unusual traction for a pre-Series-A marketplace business operating for roughly twelve months.

On 28 April 2026, Dex closed a $5.3 million seed round led by Notion Capital, with a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures, and angels from OpenAI also participating. The presence of OpenAI angels alongside a16z Speedrun, which is Andreessen Horowitz's dedicated London seed programme, positions Dex within the London AI operator ecosystem at an unusually senior level for a seed-stage company. The round is small by the standards of the contemporaneous Ineffable Intelligence $1.1bn raise in the same week, but the $1.8m ARR at seed is a materially different signal: revenue at seed in a marketplace business is rarer than research credibility.

Dex's significance as an entity is partly structural: the demand it serves, ML engineers for hire, is itself a proxy measure for the pace of applied AI hiring in London. If the client list extends beyond Granola, Synthesia and ElevenLabs into pre-revenue or pre-product AI labs, that would signal an acceleration of TEAM formation in the sector. Conversely, concentration in a small set of well-funded London AI clients creates platform risk if those clients build internal recruiting capability as they scale.