A flexible work app that connects businesses with hourly workers.
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 28, 2026
Instawork (legal entity Garuda Labs, Inc.) is a privately held, AI-powered labor marketplace and staffing platform. It connects businesses with vetted hourly/frontline workers for one-time shifts, recurring or seasonal assignments, and permanent hiring across hospitality, food service, warehousing/light industrial, retail, events, cleaning, and emerging robotics-data work. The company says it has 7M+ workers and operates across 40+ North American markets; newer newsroom materials say its network exceeds 9M–10M workers, so worker-network figures vary by source and date.
Primary product
A mobile/web marketplace for businesses to post shifts and match with vetted hourly workers, with scheduling, worker qualification, ratings, GPS/geofenced timekeeping, backup-worker coverage, payroll/insurance administration, and direct-hire conversion. It supports 1099 or W-2 engagement depending on market and role.
Founded
2015
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
Approximately 1,000–2,000 employees according to third-party estimates; public estimates conflict (about 1,033 to 1,800+).
Industry
Technology, Information and Internet; staffing and labor services
Sub-industry
AI-enabled flexible staffing marketplace / hourly workforce technology
Offices
Business model
Leadership
Chief Robot Officer, CEO, and Co-Founder
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Director of Engineering
Co-Founder; former Founder/CTO at Instawork
Investors
Published company values emphasize Empathy, Trust, Candor; Always Be Learning; Act Like an Owner; and Bias for Action. Engineering materials describe a globally distributed team, strong ownership, full-stack flexibility, extensive automated testing, and a preference for evolving a Django monolith into a modular monolith rather than adding microservice complexity prematurely.
Compensation
Public job postings show location-dependent compensation and benefits, flexible paid time off, home-office/phone/commuter stipends, HSA/FSA contributions, 401(k), and leave-related supplemental pay. Specific salary ranges and a company-wide visa policy were not consistently publicly established.
Benefits
Pricing
Businesses pay a variable bill rate incorporating worker pay and an administrative fee; Instawork states there are no subscription costs. Pricing varies by role, market, engagement type, and staffing requirements.
Differentiators
Technology
Customers
Competitors
Estimated revenue
Approximately $10M–$100M annually based on conflicting third-party estimates: one company-data profile reports $17.8M, while GetLatka estimates $97.3M 2024 ARR. Treat as directional, not company-disclosed.
Estimated monthly visits
610.9K
Instawork acquired Bengaluru-based Able Jobs, a YC- and Elevation Capital-backed jobtech company. Able Jobs CEO Ravish Agrawal became an advisor and co-founder/CPO Siddharth Srivastava joined Instawork as a product leader.
SourceACCESS Newswire / Instawork · Jul 2026
Instawork reported six consecutive months of double-digit shift and partner growth; Warehouse Associate was the most requested role for the sixth consecutive month.
Instawork Newsroom / NBC News coverage · Jun 2026
News coverage highlighted Instawork's expansion into paying workers to record real-world activities and help train humanoid and physical-AI systems.
ACCESS Newswire / Instawork · Jun 2026
Instawork said AI agents supported staffing across 16 U.S. host cities and delivered 30% better staffing outcomes while processing worker approvals at roughly 50 times the 2024 volume.
Instawork blog · Jul 2025
Announced the acquisition of Drafted, a referral-based recruiting platform, to strengthen Instawork's labor network and AI/ML capabilities.
Instawork blog · Jul 2025
Announced a $60M Series D led by TCV with participation from 9Yards Capital, Larry Fitzgerald Jr., and existing investors; the company said the round brings total funding to $160M and supports AI-driven product expansion.
57 jobs at Instawork