US-based recruitment platform Canvas announced this week that it has raised US$50 Million in Series C funding. The funding round was headed by Owl Ventures and other investors included Sequoia, Lachy Groom, Zoom Apps Fund, HighSage Ventures, BAM Elevate, and Fifth Down Capital. This brings Canvas's total valuation to US$400 Million.

Canvas presently markets its product primarily to technology companies, but has been attempting to expand into other industries and verticals for some time, with funding from earlier rounds put toward that effort. This latest round is no different: the company has said that it will use the capital raised to "expand its product into other industries and verticals outside of technology, and address later stages of people's careers".

Founded in 2017 and formerly known as Jumpstart, Canvas markets itself as a solution for bettering corporate diversity. The new product launched by Canvas is designed to render data insights and diversity benchmarks, diversity disparities, identify biases and track progress. It further allows companies to compare themselves with other competitors in the market, in terms of diversity hiring metrics and in achieving recruitment goals.

Addressing the issue of inadequate relevant data in hiring, Ben Herman, CEO of Canvas mentioned lack of actual diversity at workplaces despite the soaring number of diversity programmes world-wide. "The biggest problem in recruiting right now isn’t talent or opportunity, it’s data,” he said.

Jenny Wang, Investor at Owl Ventures, said: “We believe self-reported data is the new gold standard in modern day recruitment and Canvas is poised to take the lead in this category. We are incredibly impressed with the passion and dedication of the Canvas management team and cannot wait to support them."

Diversity recently became a part of the regulatory framework for listed companies in the US: last year, a new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission came into effect whereby companies are now obligated to disclose human capital metrics material to the business, which are likely to include diversity and inclusion.