Upwork Targets Enterprise Businesses With New Acquisitions

Employment marketplace Upwork appears to be expanding beyond its freelancer-focused roots.

In releasing its quarterly earnings Thursday (Aug. 7), the company announced it had acquired Bubty, a platform to help enterprises manage a range of workforce models and contract types, such as independent contractors and contingent W-2 workers.

Upwork said it also plans to acquire Ascen, a “digitally native solution for contingent W-2 workers with easy-to-integrate APIs,” per the earnings release.

“Bubty and Ascen provide the foundation for the contingent talent industry’s fully integrated, digitally native, country- and contract-agnostic solution providing clients with access to a full range of contingent workforce models … sourced from Upwork’s unparalleled talent pool, including over 250,000 AI experts globally,” the company said.

Those models include independent contractors, agency of record, employer of record, staff augmentation, statement of work and outsourcing.

Enterprise customers have increasingly been seeking access to those talent pools, Upwork President and CEO Hayden Brown said in an interview with TechCrunch.

“Most of the providers that exist today force their customers to choose between flexibility and compliance, or speed and scale, or having a digital tool versus having something that’s actually robust and for the enterprise,” Brown said. “And with this new capability, we’re refusing to compromise. We’re giving our customers all of the benefits they’ve been looking for, and we’ve heard loud and clear that they want this singular solution.”

The report added that Upwork decided to develop a standalone enterprise business as enterprises have very different needs in terms of compliance and software integrations than the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are the focus of its main business.

According to the interview, Brown said Upwork vetted more than 100 potential companies to acquire to expand its business. The company decided to go with Bubty and Ascen not just for what they brought on their own but also for how they functioned in tandem, with Upwork testing the firms both individually and together.

“We saw through the power of those pilots how impactful their technology was and how easy it was to basically snap together what each of them offers, along with our existing offering to deliver something very new and innovative in the market,” she added.

Earlier this year, Upwork reported record revenue for 2024 thanks in part to artificial intelligence (AI), both the AI innovations it added to its marketplace platform and AI talent the platform connects with its customers.

In Thursday’s earnings report, the company said gross services volume (GSV) from AI-related work accelerated to 30% year over year growth during the quarter, compared to 25% year over year growth in the same quarter last year.

Clients are turning to the platform to hire AI experts in more than 365 different skills, such as AI agents, AI model tuning and integration, and natural language processing.