TL;DR

• Compa is an enterprise compensation intelligence platform that uses connected data and generative AI to help organizations make better pay decisions at scale.

• It integrates directly with HR, hiring, and equity systems, bringing real-time, data-driven compensation guidance to managers, recruiters, executives, and boards at the moment decisions are made.

• Compa replaces static surveys, spreadsheets, and expensive consulting workflows with a modern, scalable alternative built for today’s labor markets.

• The result: compensation shifts from a centralized, manual function to a shared, governed capability that drives recruitment, retention, and competitive advantage across the enterprise.

Leaders of great organizations do three things: set the strategy, ensure the group efficiently assesses all available options, and recruit and retain top talent. The best leaders in the world know that their job starts and ends with the third pillar: surrounding the business with the best possible people.

We’re leading Compa’s Series B because it’s turning compensation intelligence into a true superpower for the enterprise. By bringing clear, data-driven compensation guidance directly into the hands of managers, recruiters, and executives at the moment that decisions are made, Compa is transforming what was once a walled-off function managed by a small team into a capability available across the organization.

The Most Important Decision No One Has Modernized

Across labor market swings — boom, bust, in between — leaders focus on assembling and retaining the best people because they know that talent is the bedrock of competitive advantage. And the reality is that compensation is the cornerstone of recruitment and retention.

We see this reflected in the income statement, where people cost is the largest line item. It emerges as a common thread guiding decisions distributed across the enterprise: when the CRO creates sales incentivization plans, when the board decides how to motivate their executives, and when GMs manage the armies of frontline workers that keep their businesses running.

Yet companies’ most important people walk out the door every evening. And, amazingly, much of the effort to attract, retain, and motivate is still stuck in the dark ages: surveys, spreadsheets, and gut instinct. The rest is filled in with a patchwork of stale data signals and consulting services.

That consulting industry is huge: billions in annual revenue for compensation consulting services alone, and tens of billions in annual revenue for human capital consulting. We’ve written about our interest in AI’s ability to reshape services sectors and believe there’s a huge opportunity in this subsector.

Why?

This is hard because enabling distributed teams to make good compensation decisions requires far more than a salary benchmark. It means pulling together data spread across HR, hiring, and equity systems, then applying it in the context of location, role, and a company’s own talent philosophy. Doing that consistently, and at the moment decisions are made, has historically been too complex and manual to scale.

Recent advances in generative AI make this level of coordination and decision support possible for the first time, and Compa is built to take advantage of that shift.

Enter Compa

Compa has built both the data foundation and the AI-driven workflows needed to turn compensation intelligence into a true enterprise superpower, not just within a centralized compensation team, but wherever pay decisions are made, from recruiters extending offers to boards setting executive incentives. What makes this moment different is that advances in AI now allow that intelligence to be deployed broadly and economically at the point of decision, dramatically expanding its impact and value.

Three core elements enable this shift.

First, Compa has built a large, connected compensation data network that integrates directly with the HR, hiring, and equity systems used by large enterprises. While data networks have existed before, they were historically difficult to operationalize beyond a small group of specialists. Today, AI makes it possible to continuously interpret and apply that data across the organization, allowing teams to work with current compensation information rather than static surveys.

Second, Compa’s Analyst agent automates much of the manual analysis historically performed by compensation teams and outside consultants. Advances in generative AI now make it possible to replicate and scale this expertise in software, materially increasing productivity while lowering the marginal cost of delivering high-quality compensation insight.

Third, Compa’s Partner agent captures each organization’s compensation strategy, guidelines, and guardrails, then applies them consistently wherever decisions are made. This allows compensation intelligence to move from a walled-off function managed by a few experts to a shared capability embedded across managers, recruiters, and executives, without sacrificing governance or control.

Together, these capabilities allow Compa to support an increasingly broad and complex set of compensation workflows, including sales compensation, executive pay, benefits management, workforce planning, and more.

Why we invested

Most startups begin by selling their products to mid-market companies or other startups. It makes sense: they gain traction and avoid having to win the hardest sales cycles with the most discerning customers.

Compa started the hard way: selling to the enterprise.

This piqued our curiosity: how did Compa earn the trust of some of the world’s most sophisticated companies, including OpenAI and NVIDIA, not just to buy software, but to integrate it into their most sensitive systems?

After one conversation with Charlie, Joe, and Taylor, it became clear. Enterprises were turning to Compa because it gave them a way to turn compensation intelligence into a real competitive advantage.

The team brings together a rare combination of strengths. Charlie and Joe met at Mercer, where they worked as compensation consultants, and Charlie later led HR M&A at Workday. Joe went on to become an engineering leader at Meta. Taylor founded and led multiple product innovation studios and taught at Stanford’s d.school. Together, they combine deep industry knowledge, strong technical execution, and a level of customer obsession that drives meaningful product innovation. It became clear why leading companies across industries view Compa as a trusted thought partner, not just a vendor.

As we spent more time with the team, another dynamic stood out. Compensation intelligence is only as valuable as the relevance of the data behind it. If your peers are participating, the data becomes more meaningful. If they are not, it quickly turns into just another weak signal.

Once this network effect starts to take hold, it becomes powerful. Defining who counts as a “peer” is critical. Public filings make it clear that most companies look well beyond their own industry when benchmarking talent. Auto companies compete with tech companies, hospitality with retail, and competition at the role and function level is even harder to define. As a result, participation quickly crosses industries and geographies, creating strong winner-takes-most dynamics.

Looking ahead

We’re thrilled to lead Compa’s Series B alongside Storm Ventures, Permanent Capital Ventures, and Crosslink, and to partner with Charlie, Joe, Taylor, and the entire Compa team as they work to turn compensation intelligence into a true superpower for the enterprise.

If you share our excitement about what this team is building and the opportunity ahead, Compa is hiring!

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Jump Capital is an investor in Compa AI. Views expressed represent the opinions of the authors and Jump Capital. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and references to specific companies and their capabilities do not constitute investment recommendations or guarantee future performance.