Youth unemployment is rising, and more candidates are using AI to write their CVs, making entry-level hiring harder for both job seekers and employers. Manchester startup urfuture wants to solve this problem with new hiring tools.
The company just raised £1.7 million in seed funding, led by River Capital. Other investors in the round include SyndicateRoom Access Fund, Manchester Angels, Fhunded, Solid Bond, Host Capital, and several angel investors focused on the sector.
Urfuture was founded in 2023 by Tom Keighley, Jayel Williams, and Holly Hobbs. The company is building new hiring tools to replace the traditional CV. Their platform uses a social-first approach aimed at Gen Z and a unique behavioural science matching algorithm to find motivated candidates and help employers reduce bias.
According to ONS, 957,000 UK residents aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment, or training in the final quarter of 2025, representing 12.8% of that age group. Nearly half of job seekers use AI tools to write or edit CVs, leading to many repetitive, low-quality applications for employers.
“Urfuture is uniquely positioned to bridge this gap, providing a scalable and engaging solution that empowers young people to explore entry-level roles, apprenticeships, and longer-term career pathways,” notes David Walters, Investment Director at River Capital.
Since its launch in late 2025, the app has been downloaded over 50,000 times and has garnered more than 160 million views on social media. It has gathered 2.4 million behavioural data points to improve its matching engine, making it one of the fastest-growing datasets for entry-level hiring in the UK.
Companies such as Tesco, British Airways, West Midlands Police, and Scottish Power Electricity North West use the platform to find and assess early-career talent. Early results show big improvements in candidate diversity. For example, one employer saw the number of diverse applicants increase from 8% to 47%.
“We’re rebuilding that system from first principles, combining social distribution, behavioural science and AI to create a fairer, more effective way to connect young people to work. Our ambition is to become the front door to employment for the next generation,” Keighley says.
Urfuture has also worked with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. Together, they have run campaigns to reach young people on a large scale by using urfuture’s social presence and Gen Z audience.
The new funding will help accelerate product development, including the launch of a white-label behavioural profiling and screening tool to reduce manual screening for employers.
The company also plans to grow its sales, marketing, and engineering teams and to launch a self-serve product for small and medium-sized businesses, making the platform available to more than just large enterprise clients.
