Artificial intelligence is quickly changing the job market, and many workers are struggling to keep up. People who have lost their jobs, just graduated, or want to switch careers often find it hard to learn new skills for roles like data analysis or content creation. Outplacement services are expensive, sometimes costing more than $10,000 per person, so most job seekers cannot afford them.
Pelgo is on a mission to change that. They’ve just closed a $5.5M seed round led by Flybridge Capital, with ENIAC Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, and 645 Ventures joining in.
The new funding will help them ramp up engineering, accelerate product development, and prepare for their big February launch.
Make top-tier career support available to everyone
Chieh Huang, Pelgo’s CEO and co-founder, started Pelgo after spotting a big gap: most career transition services are outdated and only help a lucky few, what he calls ‘elitist relics.’
Huang shares with TFN, “Everyone is talking about the job destruction aspect of AI, but when we looked around, there weren’t many companies or organisations actually doing anything about it. We created Pelgo to harness the change that will occur in the jobs market.”
Pelgo flips the script by using AI to deliver personalised, affordable guidance. Think of it as your AI-powered career agent, mapping your skills to market trends and building a custom reskilling roadmap, all with a human counsellor in the loop for that extra empathy and accuracy.
Pelgo stands out by using both AI and human support. Its AI-first approach focuses on new roles such as prompt engineering and AI operations. To make its services more accessible, Pelgo offers discounts to companies and universities.
Huang elaborates, “Pelgo is an agent that works for you during a career transition. If you’re looking to retire, it can help you with that. If you think starting your own business or being a solopreneur is your next move, Pelgo also assists with that. Lastly, if you are looking to move into a new job or industry, the agent helps with preparing your resume and reskilling you for that new career path. You can text your agent, call or have a session via desktop.”
“We mix humans and AI to better serve our users and to lower the cost of delivery so that everyone can have access to high-quality, effective transition services,” Huang adds.
Competitors such as LinkedIn Learning and MasterClass offer courses but do not provide job placement. Grace Blue and RiseSmart offer human-only support at executive-level pricing, while Handshake is limited to recent graduates and does not include AI-powered reskilling.
Pelgo is the only provider offering AI career transitions.
What about diversity?
On diversity, Huang notes, “We’re just starting out, so no diversity statistics to share just yet.”
What’s next for Pelgo?
Pelgo is getting ready to launch its product in February, starting with beta tests for businesses. The company plans to hire more AI engineers and career counsellors and will focus on reaching HR leaders at large companies and universities.
Huang concludes, “Our key objective over the next 3-5 years is to make something as critically important as career transition services available to EVERYONE, not just those at the executive level. Pelgo has leveraged technology to deliver a better experience at a fraction of the cost — thereby making it available to any level in any company, industry or university.”
