Fonzi Acquires Cook'd: Building the Future of Technical Hiring
By
Samantha Cox
•
Jan 26, 2026
Fonzi is building the most comprehensive talent platform on the market. We connect companies with qualified candidates through AI-powered matching, expert human support, and the fastest-growing tech community ever, an ecosystem designed to make hiring actually work and candidate experience not suck.
From the beginning, we've believed fixing hiring means consolidation, not another point solution. The talent acquisition space is badly fragmented. Great technology lives in silos, relationships are trapped in small firms, and companies are forced to stitch together 5+ tools just to run a single hiring process. Our goal is to change that.
That's why today, we're excited to announce that Fonzi has acquired Cook'd, an AI-native ATS built specifically for engineering hiring. This is our second acquisition in 8 months, following our purchase of BKB Talent, a recruiting firm trusted by some of the most ambitious startups in tech.
Why Cook'd
Most ATSs treat technical roles the same way they treat every other role. You end up with keyword filters that miss exceptional candidates who don't have the exact right buzzwords on their resume, while surfacing weak candidates who know how to game the system.
Companies are forced to choose between speed and quality. Recruiters spend hours becoming Boolean search experts just to find someone who knows TypeScript. Great engineers slip through the cracks because they worked at a startup the ATS doesn't recognize or because they described their experience in slightly different terms than the filter expects.
Cook'd started with a different question: what does hiring look like when you're actually evaluating what engineers have built?
Their platform is purpose-built for engineering roles. Companies can set up a role end-to-end in under two minutes. AI generates the job description, automatically posts to major job boards, and screening starts as soon as candidates apply.
The system enriches every candidate with data from LinkedIn, GitHub, and internal datasets, then uses agentic workflows to evaluate the companies' engineers helped build, the code they’ve shipped, and the products they’ve worked on.
Cook'd's graph-based screening uses curated datasets of companies, schools, and ecosystems. Adding "hundreds of relevant startups" to a filter is a toggle, not manual Boolean work. Checking for TypeScript experience means looking at GitHub commits, not scanning for a keyword.
It understands context. Someone who was employee #5 at a startup is different from someone who joined Google as engineer #10,000, and both might be exactly what a company needs depending on what they're building.
With this process, teams spend less time screening, surface qualified candidates earlier, and make better hires. Strong engineers who are already interested don't get lost in the noise.
The Strategy
Each acquisition we make is a deliberate piece of building complete talent infrastructure:
BKB Talent brought us relationships with the best companies in tech and a team that knows how to source and close exceptional candidates. This is the human expertise that no amount of AI can replace.
Cook'd brings us technology for the full engineering hiring workflow including job creation and screening at scale. This is the infrastructure that makes technical recruiting faster and more effective.
Fonzi's marketplace ties it together, matching candidates with opportunities through AI-powered intelligence, then supporting both sides through the entire hiring journey with best-in-class tools and relationships.
Each piece connects into one platform that handles hiring end-to-end, purpose-built for the unique challenges of technical recruiting.
What This Means for Companies
If you're hiring engineers, you know how broken the current process is. You post a role and get 500 applications. Maybe 20 are worth looking at. You spend days or weeks filtering through resumes, trying to figure out who actually has the skills they claim and who just optimized their resume for keywords.
With Cook'd now part of Fonzi, here's what changes:
You get signal, not noise. Our platform identifies candidates who have real technical ability and relevant experience. Screening happens automatically as candidates apply.
You work with one platform, not five. No more managing separate tools for job posting, applicant tracking, sourcing, and marketplace recruiting. Everything lives in one place, and it all works together.
You tap into real expertise. Cook'd's technology is powerful, but it's even more powerful when combined with the relationships and recruiting intelligence we've built through BKB Talent.
You get infrastructure that works the way you think. If you're a technical founder or engineering leader, Cook'd's screening flows will make immediate sense. They mirror how you'd evaluate candidates yourself.
This matters especially for startups and growth-stage companies where every engineering hire is critical and you can't afford to miss great candidates or waste weeks on bad ones.
What This Means for Candidates
If you're an engineer, here's what's changing:
Your work actually gets seen. No more getting filtered out because you didn't use the exact keyword some ATS is searching for, or because you worked at a startup that isn't in someone's manual Boolean query. Cook'd's system understands the ecosystem. It knows the companies, the investors, the context. If you've done real work at real companies, it shows up.
You get matched, not just screened. We're trying to understand what you've built, what you're good at, and what you're looking for, then connect you with companies where you'd thrive and make an impact.
You're evaluated on substance. The system looks at your GitHub contributions, the products you've shipped, the companies you've helped build. Not just whether you listed the right technologies in the right format on your resume.
You get access to better opportunities. Between Fonzi's Match Day events, our marketplace, and the relationships from BKB Talent, we're building direct paths to companies that are actually hiring and actually aligned with what you want to do next.
The future of hiring shouldn't be about gaming ATSs or hoping your resume gets past keyword filters. It should be about connecting great engineers with companies building things that matter, and doing it in a way that respects everyone's time.
What's Next
We're systematically consolidating the talent acquisition category. Hiring is broken. Great technology exists in pockets, but it's disconnected from great recruiting expertise, which is disconnected from efficient matching, which is disconnected from quality job distribution.
Companies shouldn't have to manage five different vendors and three different workflows just to make one great hire. Candidates shouldn't have to navigate a maze of disconnected tools and black-box processes.
We're building the platform that should have existed all along: one place where companies can find, evaluate, and hire exceptional technical talent, and where candidates can connect with opportunities that actually match what they're looking for.
Cook'd gives us world-class technology for technical screening and evaluation. BKB gives us deep relationships and recruiting expertise. Fonzi ties it together with AI-powered matching and marketplace infrastructure.
If you're an engineer looking for your next role, we'd love to have you in our next Match Day. If you're a company that's tired of stitching together fragmented tools and still not getting great results, let's talk.
For candidates: Apply for Match Day and get matched with companies actively hiring.
For companies: Schedule a call to learn how Fonzi can transform your technical hiring.
