Work-ID

What Work-ID does

Work-ID AG is a Swiss HR technology startup founded in July 2025 in Thalwil, Switzerland, that operates a skills-based digital passport and matching platform targeting the Swiss labor market. The company's core product is a Progressive Web App that allows individual workers to create anonymized profiles documenting their skills, soft-skills, and career preferences, and to be matched against job opportunities and training recommendations. Corporate clients access a separate Skills-Manager platform (skills-manager.ch) for talent acquisition, internal skills inventory, and external candidate sourcing.

The underlying technology combines a skills-matching algorithm with an agent-based AI architecture built on Microsoft Agent Framework using GPT-4.1 via Azure AI Foundry, including a 'Workly' chatbot for first-level support and an Education Agent sub-agent for upskilling recommendations. The company has also integrated research outputs from the Innosuisse Flagship project 'Swiss Circular Economy of Skills and Competences' (2022–2025), including EPFL's Skills Trilogy Framework (automated skills taxonomy from job postings, CVs, and course descriptions), ZHAW's GROW-based digital coaching agent, and HSG's Individual Competence Portfolio framework. Implementation is delivered in partnership with Noser Engineering, and the company holds both 'swiss made software' and 'swiss made software + AI' certifications.

The business model is a freemium and sales-led hybrid: the Work-ID app is free for individual job seekers, while the Skills-Manager is a paid SaaS subscription for companies (quote-based pricing, 20-day free trial, monthly billing with 30-day cancellation notice). The company is funded by a CHF 4 million seed round closed in July 2025 from Kaufmännischer Verband Schweiz, Kaufmännischer Verband Zürich, and Future of Work Group AG, and operates exclusively within Switzerland, with phone-based authentication supporting Swiss, German, and Austrian numbers.

Name

Work-ID

Legal name

Work-ID AG

Website

https://work-id.ch

Company type

Private

Founded year

2025

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Work-ID AG is a Swiss HR-tech startup operating a digital skills passport and AI-powered matching platform that connects individual job seekers (free) with Swiss employers via a paid Skills-Manager SaaS, addressing skills shortages and hidden workers in the Swiss labor market.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

HR Tech / Skills-Based Recruiting

NAICS

Employment Placement Agencies (561311), Employment Placement Agencies and Executive Search Services (56131), Employment Services (5613)

SIC

Services-Employment Agencies (7361)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYBPACAPAD

Talent Acquisition (Recruiting) & Applicant Tracking (ATS)

Business & Public Services/HR, Staffing & Recruitment Services/Human Capital Management (HCM) & HR Tech

SECONDARYEDAAAOAL

Job Placement, Matching & Career Navigation Services

Education/Adult & Continuing Education/Workforce Development Initiatives

SECONDARYEDAFADAM

Skills Assessment & Talent/Employability Testing Platforms

Education/Education Technology (EdTech) & Digital Learning/Assessment, Testing, Proctoring & Credentialing Platforms

SECONDARYBPACAOAG

Career Assessment & Skills Profiling (Assessments for Transition)

Business & Public Services/HR, Staffing & Recruitment Services/Outplacement, Career Transition & Workforce Redeployment

Keywords

• Skills-based recruiting
• Talent management platform
• Digital skills passport
• HR tech Switzerland
• Skills matching software

Headquarters

HQ city

Thalwil

HQ country

Switzerland

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Skills-Manager SaaS Subscriptions: Corporate employers pay for the Skills-Manager platform, which enables skills-based recruiting, internal talent pool management, and workforce skills visualization. The Skills-Manager has a 20-day free trial per company, after which a paid subscription is required. Pricing is quote-based / not publicly disclosed; a pricing page exists at skills-manager.ch. Service contracts have a 30-day cancellation notice and auto-renew for the chosen subscription period.
2. Work-ID Individual (Free): Individual workers use the Work-ID app free of charge. Job seekers receive job recommendations, skill gap analysis, and can connect with employers. The company believes job searching should be free for employees and that employer companies should bear the cost of contact.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Work-ID operates a dual-product skills platform for the Swiss labor market. The free Work-ID app serves as an anonymous digital skills passport for individual job seekers, documenting skills, soft-skills, and preferences for skills-based job matching. The paid Skills-Manager SaaS enables corporate clients to find candidates based on skills, build talent pools, and map internal employee skills.

Product overview

Work-ID operates a dual-product platform for the Swiss labor market. The free Work-ID app serves as a digital skills passport for job seekers, enabling skills documentation and matching with job opportunities. The paid Skills-Manager application serves corporate clients for talent acquisition and internal skills inventory. The platform connects two labor markets: an internal market for employees connected to a company, and an external market for open job opportunities. An AI chatbot called Workly supports user interactions by providing education and training recommendations. The platform is built in collaboration with Noser Engineering and holds the Swiss Made Software + AI certification.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Skills-Manager: Platform for company clients to find suitable users with profiles for open positions, create talent pools, and view employee skills.
• Workly

Products and services

• Work-ID Free digital skills passport (Skills-Ausweis) for individual Swiss job seekers. Users anonymously document their skills, soft-skills, wish-skills, and work preferences, and receive skills-matched job recommendations. Authentication via Swiss phone number (SMS); no email required.
• Skills-Manager Paid SaaS platform for corporate clients to find suitable talent profiles internally and externally, build talent pools, and visualize workforce skills. Enables hiring managers to search by skills rather than job titles. Includes a 20-day free trial per company; quote-based pricing thereafter.

Quantifiable outcome

• 90% of companies using skills-based hiring reduced mis-hires (TestGorilla survey cited by Work-ID)
• +9 more outcomes

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability8 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• KV Business School (KVBS)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerKV Business School is listed as a partner of Work-ID, likely contributing to curriculum alignment, skills taxonomy development, and student/graduate adoption of the Work-ID platform. As a major Swiss business education institution, the partnership supports the educational ecosystem dimension of the platform.
• Eidgenössische Hochschule für Berufsbildung (EHB)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerEHB is a core consortium partner in the Innosuisse Flagship Project 'Swiss Circular Economy of Skills and Competences' (SCESC), working with Work-ID from 2022–2025. EHB contributed research on innovative learning concepts and informal workplace learning. The project is being integrated into the Work-ID ecosystem post-completion.
• EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerEPFL is a core consortium partner in the Innosuisse Flagship SCESC project, contributing the Skills Trilogy Framework (automated collection, annotation, and aggregation of job postings, CVs, and courses into a unified skills taxonomy), Learner-Centered Recommendation Framework (personalized course and career path recommendations), and AI expertise. Work-ID is integrating these research outputs into its platform.
• Universität Zürich (UZH)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUZH is a core consortium partner in the Innosuisse Flagship SCESC project, leading the Governance subproject (cohesion and context analysis of continuing vocational education and training). Research by Prof. Dr. Katrin Kraus (Chair for Vocational and Continuing Education) provides the governance framework underlying Work-ID's approach to skills validation and lifelong learning.
• ZHAW Zurich University of Applied SciencescoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerZHAW is a core consortium partner in the Innosuisse Flagship SCESC project, developing the CoLearning Circles (CoLCi) weekly peer learning framework and contributing to the Personalized Dialog-based Digital Coach. Work-ID will integrate these as the 'activation layer' — turning skill insights into action through coaching and peer accountability.
• University of St. Gallen (HSG)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerHSG (through its Institute for Business Education and Educational Management, IWP) is a core consortium partner in the Innosuisse Flagship SCESC project, leading the Individual Competence Portfolio subproject and the AI-Based Content Creation and Funding Model. HSG Newsroom explicitly featured Work-ID as the industry partner delivering the 'Circular Economy of Competences'. HSG also recognized Work-ID research in 2026.
• Noser EngineeringcoreTechnology or IntegrationNoser Engineering is Work-ID's technical implementation partner for software development. Based in Winterthur, Switzerland, Noser Engineering provides the development resources that enable Work-ID to meet the 'Swiss Made Software' requirement of at least 60% domestic software development. The partnership ensures high-quality, Switzerland-based technical delivery.
• Microsoft (Azure AI Foundry)coreTechnology or IntegrationMicrosoft provides the Azure AI Foundry infrastructure powering Work-ID's AI features, including GPT-4.1 for the Workly chatbot. Work-ID's AI architecture uses the Microsoft Agent Framework for orchestrating specialized AI agents. This is an inbound technology infrastructure partnership.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Regional players

• StepStone: StepStone is a leading European job marketplace with strong DACH presence and growing investments in skills-based matching and semantic job recommendations. Comparable as a regional incumbent serving Swiss employers and candidates in the same talent acquisition category.
• XING: XING is the leading German-language professional network and recruiting platform, dominant in the DACH region. It competes with Work-ID for Swiss job-seeker mindshare and employer recruiting spend in the same skills and job-matching category.
• JobCloud: JobCloud operates leading Swiss job platforms (jobs.ch, jobup.ch, jobscout24.ch) and is the established Swiss domestic job marketplace. It is the most direct Swiss incumbent competitor to Work-ID's employer-side recruiting use case in the Swiss labor market.

Broad incumbents

• LinkedIn (Microsoft): LinkedIn is the dominant professional network and recruiting platform with LinkedIn Skills Graph and Recruiter tools. It is the principal broad incumbent competitor to Work-ID's job-matching and skills-positioning value proposition for both job seekers and employers.
• Workday: Workday is a broad enterprise HCM platform whose Workday Skills Cloud adds skills inference, talent marketplace, and matching to its core HR suite. It competes indirectly as an established incumbent that large enterprises may prefer over Work-ID Skills-Manager.

Direct peers

• Eightfold AI: Eightfold AI operates a global AI-driven talent intelligence and skills-matching platform serving enterprise HR and recruiting teams. It is the closest direct competitor to Work-ID's Skills-Manager, addressing the same skills-based matching and internal mobility use case at much larger enterprise scale.
• Techwolf: Techwolf provides an AI skills engine that infers employee skills from existing HR systems and powers skills-based matching and internal mobility. It overlaps directly with Work-ID's Skills-Manager for inferring, normalizing, and matching on skills at enterprise customers.
• 365Talents: 365Talents is a European HR-tech platform focused on skills-based internal mobility, talent redeployment, and AI-driven matching. It is a direct European competitor with similar product positioning to Work-ID Skills-Manager, particularly around skills ontologies and HR use cases.

Emerging players

• Beamery: Beamery offers a talent lifecycle platform combining CRM, candidate matching, and skills-based workforce planning. While broader in scope than Work-ID, its skills-matching and talent-pool features compete with the Skills-Manager product category.
• Skyhive: Skyhive provides AI-driven labor market analytics, skills taxonomy, and reskilling recommendations. Its focus on a normalized skills graph and personalized career pathing overlaps with Work-ID's Skills Trilogy Framework and learner recommendation features.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/work-id-ag

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles10 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors2 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Work-ID