Key Takeaways
- Brescia-based Gyver closed a €1.4 million pre-seed round led by Brighteye, with participation from altitude, Vento Ventures, Zanichelli Venture, existing investor Antler, and several business angels
- Europe currently has 2.7 million electrical workers in a €3 billion hiring market that has been chronically underserved by general-purpose job boards
- The EU faces a skilled blue-collar shortfall of 5.8 million additional workers by 2030, driven by electrification, grid modernisation, and ageing demographics
- Gyver’s AI conversational platform replicates the referral and word-of-mouth hiring process at scale, with plans to expand beyond recruiting into upskilling and PLC workflow tools
Quick Recap
Italian startup Gyver has officially closed a €1.4 million pre-seed funding round to build AI-powered workforce infrastructure for Europe’s electricians and skilled tradespeople, as first reported by EU Startups on May 13, 2026. The Brescia-based company, founded by Francesco Defendi, Leo Acciarri, and Mattia Zarrelli during an Antler residency in late 2024, is deploying a conversational AI platform to fix a hiring market that general job boards like Indeed and StepStone have long failed to serve. The round was led by Brighteye, a European edtech and workforce VC with over €150 million in assets under management.
How Gyver’s AI Works?
Gyver’s core product is an AI-powered conversational hiring platform built specifically around how electricians actually find work: through referrals and trusted word-of-mouth networks. Rather than forcing tradespeople through rigid job-board forms, the platform uses WhatsApp-integrated AI agents to initiate conversations with workers, surface what they value in a job, and match them to employers whose needs align.
The company says its early community already numbers over 21,000 electricians, giving it a significant data moat on candidate preferences before the capital even hits the bank. The funding will be directed at two specific product areas: improving the AI matching and employer experience workflows, and beginning the build-out of upskilling and productivity tools.
The longer-term roadmap includes tools for electrical design and PLC programming, meaning Gyver intends to become a full-stack workforce operating system for electricians rather than just a hiring middleman. Italy is the initial beachhead market, one of Europe’s largest construction and electrical contracting economies, before a broader EU rollout.
The investor thesis is clear. David Guérin, Partner at Brighteye, stated: “Europe has 2.7 million electrical workers and a €3 billion hiring market that has been chronically underserved. The electrification of the world, industrial maintenance and ageing demographics are widening the gap between supply and demand faster than traditional tools can handle.
Why This Moment is the Right Moment?
The structural tailwind behind Gyver is hard to overstate. The EU currently has around 28 million skilled blue-collar workers, but industry forecasts suggest an additional 5.8 million will be needed by 2030 to support renewable energy buildout, data centre construction, and industrial grid upgrades. Vacancy rates in the EU construction sector already hit 3.4% in Q3 2023, outpacing both services and industry, and 80% of EU employers report difficulty finding candidates with the right skills.
In the electrician segment specifically, 1 in 2 companies in some European markets report being unable to find enough workers to take on available projects. Europe’s broader digital-to-physical infrastructure push makes this acutely urgent. Governments across the continent are accelerating spending on renewable energy grids, EV charging networks, and data centres, all sectors that are heavily dependent on licensed electricians.
Meanwhile, Europe’s working-age population is shrinking, with the EU expected to lose around 1 million workers per year until 2050, meaning organic workforce replenishment alone is not a viable solution. Co-founder Francesco Defendi summed up the mission: “Electricians are the most important yet neglected category of workers in the modern economy. They embody the combination of brain and manual craft that cannot be replaced by AI, yet they have been left behind by modern technology.”
Competitive Landscape
Gyver’s closest comparable at this stage is Ringtime, a Belgian startup that raised €1.8 million in March 2026 for its AI-driven blue-collar recruitment agent, and Vahan, an Indian blue-collar hiring platform backed by over $20 million in funding with a more generalised approach across 50 job categories. The table below compares these three platforms on the dimensions most relevant to an enterprise or electrician employer evaluating each tool.
| Feature / Metric | Gyver | Ringtime | Vahan |
| Primary Focus | Electricians and industrial tradespeople (EU) | Logistics, retail, hospitality (EU, multi-sector) | General blue-collar across 50 job categories (India/Asia) |
| Funding Raised | €1.4M pre-seed (May 2026) | €1.8M seed (March 2026) | $20M+ across multiple rounds |
| AI Approach | Conversational AI via WhatsApp, trust-based referral replication | Voice-native AI agents; 22 language support, outbound/inbound calls | AI chatbot for job discovery and automated screening |
| Community / Network | 21,000+ electrician community pre-raise | Revenue-generating at €400K ARR; clients include House of HR | Large India-focused employer network, 2-3 day avg. fill time |
| Roadmap Beyond Hiring | Upskilling, PLC workflow tools, electrical design | Property scheduling, cross-sector conversation automation | Primarily hiring; some financial assistance to workers |
| Geography | Italy-first, then broader EU | Belgium, expanding to Netherlands, UK, Germany | India and Southeast Asia |
Gyver’s edge lies in its vertical depth: an electrician-only community of 21,000 members gives it richer training signal and trust data than any horizontal platform can replicate at this stage. Ringtime, meanwhile, has the advantage of paying customers and multi-language voice AI already in production, making it more immediately deployable for staffing agencies across sectors. The two are not yet direct competitors in geography or sector but will likely converge as both pursue EU-wide scale.
TechnoTrenz’s Takeaway
I will be honest: when I first read this headline, I half-expected another generic “AI disrupts HR” pitch. But the more I dug in, the more I think this is genuinely one of the more smartly framed startup stories of 2026.
In my experience covering workforce tech, the biggest mistake founders make is treating blue-collar hiring as a simplified version of white-collar hiring. Gyver’s founders have done the opposite. They ran a solar installation business, saw the shortage firsthand, and built a product around the specific cultural truth that electricians trust word of mouth more than any algorithm. That’s not a feature choice. That’s earned insight.
I think this is a big deal because the timing lines up with one of the largest infrastructure spending cycles in European history. Grids are being rebuilt, data centres are being installed at record pace, and every single one of those projects needs licensed electricians. The labour gap is not a projection. It is already causing project delays today. An AI platform that can mobilise a 21,000-person community faster than a staffing agency can make three phone calls has real leverage here.