No one is putting the remote working genie back in the bottle. Which is good news for Oyster, a payroll and HR platform that specializes in distributed workforces — or “global employment” as its marketing paints it. The 2019-founded U.S. startup has just closed a $59 million Series D funding round led by Silver Lake Waterman. 

The new funding, which brings its total raised to date to $286 million, sees its valuation increase slightly — up to $1.2 billion versus the $1 billion it was valued at back in 2022 when it raised its $150 million Series C. This means Oyster has maintained its market value at a time when many other tech companies have been forced into down rounds, bucking a painful trend. 

Winding the clock back to 2021 — when the world was in the throws of the pandemic and remote working surged as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns — Oyster’s $50 million Series B was raised on a $475 million valuation.

Since then, remote and hybrid working have become established and that’s reflected in some far higher valuations. Oyster competes with a number of other HR platforms, including Deel, which at last count was valued at a staggering $12 billion (versus $5.5 billion back in October 2021, when it raised a $425 million Series D. Then it topped up with $50 million in May 2022 on a $12 billion valuation). 

Other competitors include Papaya Global (now also valued at over $1 billion), Turing and Remote, among others. 

Over a call with TechCrunch, Oyster’s CEO and co-founder, Tony Jamous, admitted the company raised its Series C “at the peak of the market.” However, he emphasized the sunny side: It’s been able to maintain the valuation, “despite the fact that the market’s had a reset on valuations, generally.”

He’s also quick to point out that the latest valuation is still more than at the last funding round, adding: “We’ve grown significantly … more than 7x in two years, and we improved our margins tremendously. It’s a completely different business financially. So I’m glad that we did not have a down round, which would have been the expected scenario if we didn’t grow that much and improved the business in that time.”

Oyster’s USP is a focus on helping make it easy for companies to pay remote workers in emerging markets. It can do this by employing the worker on the other company’s behalf — and then remitting the salary that the client pays Oyster. 

It says over 40% of the people employed on its platform are in emerging markets, adding that it remitted “hundreds of millions” to workers in emerging markets in 2023. 

The new funding will be used to accelerate development of the platform, and expand more generally. 

In the last year, Oyster — which is B Corp-certified — has launched several new products and services, including Global Payroll, Visa Sponsorships and local compensation insights, which help companies deal with staff hired across over 180 countries. 

It’s also launched a no-code offering that enables customers to offer global hiring, payroll, and rewards right within their own HR product. 

Clients include the likes of BambooHR, Quora, Lokalise, Printify and TriNet. 

While hybrid and remote working are clearly here to stay, Jamous talks up a trend he couches as “a shift to global employment.” He says this means the ability to “reverse brain drain” from developing countries and help them retain homegrown talent. 

“That’s why we’re the only B Corp in our category … and everything we do is focused on democratizing global job opportunities,” he said.

Jamous, whose family had to leave Lebanon after the civil war, has had an incredible run after he sold his first company to Ericsson for $6.5 billion. He’s long said he wanted to build something to deliver a positive impact on the world, and — with Oyster — he reckons he’s hit the spot. 

The big question, however, is how does he feel about competing against category behemoths like Deel that can, perhaps unfairly, make a $1.2 billion valuation look slightly pedestrian.

Jamous argues Oyster’s focus on cross-border employment helps set it apart. “The others are becoming multi-purpose platforms, moving into HR, and payroll,” he suggests, saying this means they’re competing against clients’ own in-house HR and payroll systems — which he argues can end up being confusing and counterproductive. 

“We want to provide companies with their own means to do global employment, and we’re not going to go into their other spaces like HR,” he added.

In a supporting statement on the Series D raise, Shawn O’Neill, managing partner of Oyster’s lead investor Silver Lake Waterman, said: “Global employment is incredibly complex, involving many moving parts. … In just four years, Oyster built a platform of trusted tools and resources for bulletproof global compliance and in-depth local HR knowledge — a strategy that has made them one of the leaders in the market.”

Existing investors also participated in Oyster’s Series D, including Emergence Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, G2 Venture Partners, Georgian and Stripes.