Dayforce to buy Toronto AI interview firm Ribbon

Dayforce, the Canadian-led human resources software company, said Oct. 23, 2026, that it will acquire Toronto-based Ribbon AI, a startup that uses a generated voice to conduct screening interviews with job candidates, BetaKit reported.

The price and closing date were not disclosed.

Dayforce said Ribbon’s technology will be built into a new agentic recruiting experience meant to help customers source, screen, evaluate and engage candidates. Ribbon’s platform asks candidates questions drawn from a job description.

“AI can take on more of the manual, time-sensitive work that slows hiring down,” David Ossip, Dayforce’s founder and chief executive, said. He added that “Ribbon accelerates our vision for agentic recruiting” and that recruiters should be free to focus on engaging talent and making decisions.

Dayforce said Ribbon’s product is proven at scale, with hundreds of customers and more than one million completed interviews, and that it is nearing the launch of an AI scheduling agent.

Ribbon was founded in 2022 by chief executive Arsham Ghahramani and chief operating officer Dave Vu. It raised US$8.2 million in early 2025 in a round led by Radical Ventures, according to the company.

The deal comes while Dayforce is itself changing hands. Earlier this year it agreed to be taken private by U.S. firm Thoma Bravo in a transaction valued at US$12.3 billion, or about $17 billion.

AI job interviews have drawn pushback. The Guardian reported on Oct. 14 on their rising use by U.K. recruiters, and a Guardian commenter described being interviewed by an AI assistant as “dystopian and dehumanising.” Canadian job seekers may meet more of them as employers adopt tools like Ribbon’s. Canadian AI demand is also showing up in other Toronto-area companies, including 1Password, which passed US$500 million in annual revenue, and Ottawa has just unveiled a $1.75-billion plan to boost venture capital.

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