Paddy Lambros spent two and a half years advising roughly 100 European startups on hiring at the London-based venture capital firm Atomico. During that time, he kept coming back to the same observation: nearly every business problem at a young company could be traced to a hiring decision. “It was either not having the right people in the role or having the wrong people,” Lambros told Fortune. A bad hire here, a stalled search there, and otherwise promising companies would grind to a halt.
That observation became the genesis of Dex, an AI-powered recruiting startup Lambros founded in early 2025. On Monday, Dex said it had raised a $5.3 million seed round led by Notion Capital, with participation from a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures and angel investors from OpenAI and other firms.
