Two Facebook and Google geniuses are combining search and AI to transform HR

Two former product wizards from Facebook and Google are combining Silicon Valley's buzziest buzz words -- search, artificial intelligence, and big data -- into a new technology service aimed at solving nothing less than the problem of how to provide professional meaning in the modern world. Founded by chief executive Ashutosh Garg, a former search and personalization expert at Google and IBM research, and chief technology officer Varun Kacholia, who led the ranking team at Google and YouTube search and the News Feed team at Facebook, Eightfold.ai The two men have come together (in perhaps the most Silicon Valley fashion) to bring the analytical rigor for which their former employers are famous to the question of how best to help employees find fulfillment in the workforce. "Employment is the backbone of society and it is a hard problem," to match the right person with the right role, says Garg. "People pitch recruiting as a transaction… [but] to build a holistic platform is to build a company that fundamentally solves this problem," of making work the most meaningful to the most people, he says. It's a big goal, and it's backed by $24 million in funding provided by some big-time investors -- Lightspeed Ventures and Foundation Capital .