UNLEASH is proud to reveal the finalists for the prestigious UNLEASH Startup Award 2025 that will competing to take home the grand prize.

The best and the brightest HR startups have been competing behind the scenes – and today we are excited to announce our five finalists for this year’s competition.

These five innovative startups will compete on-site on Day One (21 October at 11am on the Innovation Stage) at UNLEASH World 2025 in front of our panel of expert judges.

The winner will join an exclusive club of prestigious UNLEASH Startup alumni like Peakon (now part of Workday), Oneteam, Talent Alpha, Clustree, TandemHR, CandidateID, Welliba, and Talk’n’Job.

The Finalists:

ALBERT

Albert is revolutionizing Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) for enterprises by eliminating guesswork and complexity. Its AI-powered SaaS platform simplifies SWP, empowering businesses to plan and adapt with confidence. 

Unlike traditional spreadsheets or BI tools, Albert seamlessly handles the intricacies of data science and real-time collaboration, helping organizations manage business transformations and optimize their workforce with ease.

Albert is the first challenger to traditional human resources planning practices. Founded in 2021, the startup currently has 15 employees and has successfully gained around 20 clients present in 22 countries, most of which are part of the SBF 120.

BLIFY

Blify is the first AI-native Learning Operating System, built to make corporate learning seamless, personalized, and effective.

Instead of siloed LMS or top-down programs, Blify embeds continuous training directly in the flow of work — across Microsoft Teams, Slack, WhatsApp and more. 

Powered by a multi-agent AI architecture, Blify transforms leadership development, compliance, onboarding, and sales enablement into contextual micro-moments that drive real behavior change. 

In just seven months, Blify has been ranked among the top 1% most promising European startups, and already supports companies like Kaufman & Broad or Club Med.

PANDRIA

Dutch startup Pandria helps People & Culture professionals deliver a continuous feedback culture, without the added work and awkwardness for teams. Its conversational AI coach lives in Slack or MS Teams, and proactively asks the right person for hyper-relevant feedback, at the right time.

 It then coaches on how to give feedback constructively, and how to have great growth conversations. 

When formal review time comes around, Pandria summarises feedback with a deep understanding of your HR processes and frameworks.

 For People leaders and managers, Pandria unlocks unparalleled insight into how to motivate and engage teams. Feeding a real growth transformation, and making performance management easy, fair and transparent.

PAYBIX

Managing payroll across multiple countries is still a manual, fragmented, and frustrating process. Employers struggle with inconsistent service levels and endless spreadsheets. Payroll providers lack the tech to serve global clients. And HCM platforms hit a wall when it comes to complex, country-specific integrations.

Paybix brings clarity and control to global payroll. Its platform, Epix, is purpose-built to unify and digitize multi-country payroll operations, from multinational employers to payroll providers, or HCM vendors.

Founded in 2022, the Belgium-based startup aims to provide the flexibility, automation and visibility that a renewed global payroll on any scale needs.

VIZZY

Vizzy is on a mission to transform hiring by reimagining the CV for a new era – where people are seen beyond a credentials-first approach and championed for their potential, personality, and skill.

Launched in 2023, Vizzy has already helped brands like Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, Burberry, WHSmith, and Virgin discover top, diverse talent that traditional hiring methods often miss. 

By replacing an outdated application method with an inclusive, human-first, engagement-driven approach, Vizzy cuts through the noise to help great businesses connect with their best candidates.

The Grand Prize:

Entering the UNLEASH Startup Award offers the best and brightest of the HR tech landscape unrivalled access to the top HR analysts, thought leaders and investors. Past judges include Josh Bersin, Katarina Berg, Mike Ettling and Sarah White.

But the lucky winner will scoop a €50,000 sponsorship package for a future UNLEASH event – but please note, this figure does not include the price of the stand build and design.

The best of luck to all the finalists and we look forward to seeing you at UNLEASH World, 20-22 October in Paris.

Want more information?

For more tips and insights, join the UNLEASH Startup community here.

And for more information on our Startup packages, which provide marketing opportunities to showcase your achievements, please contact:

Kennedy Cook, Startup & Investor Program Lead – at Kennedy@unleash.ai

Aniko Illes, Startup Business Development Manager – at Aniko@unleash.ai or on 00 36 20 255 87 41.