Factorial, the Barcelona-based HR software company, said on 3 September 2026 that it had acquired Empion, a Berlin startup that uses AI to assess job candidates on culture fit, skills and motivation rather than on keywords in their CVs.
Terms were not disclosed. Factorial said it expects the deal to add several million dollars of annual recurring revenue, according to the Catalan newspaper Ara.
Empion founder and chief executive Annika von Mutius will join Factorial's leadership team in Germany and lead the development of assessments while the two products are integrated. Existing Empion customers will see no change to their product, service or contracts, Factorial said, though Empion's technology and team will over time be folded fully into Factorial.
What Empion built
Von Mutius and Larissa Leitner founded Empion in Berlin in 2021. The company started as an automated headhunting service that matched professionals and employers on skills and cultural fit, and charged companies a fixed monthly subscription under annual contracts.
Its assessments are used by German companies ranging from small firms to large enterprises. Factorial named Deutsche Telekom, Procter & Gamble, Siemens Mobility, Raiffeisenbanken and HUK-COBURG among Empion's clients.
Von Mutius holds a PhD in mathematics, sits on the board of the German AI association KI-Bundesverband and previously worked on AI robotics systems in San Francisco. Neither company disclosed Empion's headcount.
Empion's pitch to employers was that matching candidates on values and working style, as well as skills, leads to better hires than filtering CVs for keywords. Von Mutius summed it up by saying hiring should be about fit rather than keywords.
“We built Empion on the belief that hiring should be about fit, not keywords.”
Why Factorial is buying
Factorial is using the deal to launch candidate and employee assessments as a built-in, AI-powered part of its platform, an area where HR software usually relies on third-party tools. Empion's culture-fit assessments will be included from the start, and Factorial plans to add psychometric, cognitive, skills and employee-driven assessments.
Germany is Factorial's main international growth market, and the company said the purchase gives it more local presence and credibility there. Chief executive Jordi Romero called Germany the most important market in Europe for workforce technology and said the deal signalled Factorial's ambition to be a leading AI company in Europe.
Founded in Barcelona in 2016, Factorial says it serves more than 16,000 companies in over 90 countries. It reached a $2.5 billion valuation (about €2.15 billion) after a $150 million round a few months before the deal, and General Catalyst has committed up to $540 million of non-dilutive capital through its Customer Value Fund, according to Emprendedores.
Factorial's co-founders are Romero and Bernat Farrero. The company told Ara that it has an almost unlimited margin in the bank for further moves, and Emprendedores reported that Factorial now ranks among the 20 most valuable scale-ups in Spain and Europe.
The deal was announced in early September; Factorial's own blog post about the acquisition is dated 5 October 2026.
The founders and the funding
Empion raised a €2.4 million (about $2.8 million) pre-seed round in 2022 from VR Ventures, Redstone and Basinghall Partners, with HR-sector angels including Anna Kaiser, Oliver Manojlovic and Emma Tracey.
In October 2023 it raised a €6 million (about $7 million) seed round led by Cavalry Ventures, with Redstone and VR Ventures investing again. Inforcapital put Empion's total funding at about $9 million; reports differ slightly on the exact figure.
Von Mutius and Leitner both hold doctorates. Inforcapital named Redstone as one of Empion's early investors; Cavalry Ventures, which led the seed round, and VR Ventures were the other institutional backers named in funding announcements.
What happens to customers
For now, Empion's clients keep their current service and contracts. Over time, the assessments they use will become part of Factorial's wider HR suite, which covers hiring, performance and engagement, and Factorial customers will be able to run the same assessments without a separate tool.
