Airwallex to snap up ‘tsunami of talent’, defying tech downturn

With tech giants Alphabet and Microsoft laying off thousands of staff, this Australian tech unicorn says it’s making the most of the opportunity.

Airwallex co-founder and chief executive Jack Zhang: ‘We’re growing and want to snap them up because good people are what helps bring our vision to life.’

Australian fintech Airwallex has detailed plans to hire up to 500 new workers this year – bucking the tech sector downturn and growing its headcount by as much as 40 per cent amid lay-offs at Alphabet, Meta and Amazon.

At the World Economic Forum at Davos at the weekend, Airwallex chief executive Jack Zhang said he wanted to hire engineering and product specialists who have been laid off, including in Australia where he hopes to fill 90 new positions.

“There’s a tsunami of talent out there that other companies have turned their back on. We’re growing and want to snap them up because good people are what helps bring our vision to life,” he said.

“I don‘t think you can quantify the missed opportunity from cutting back on the talent and skills that could shore up your future.

“We’ve got big ambitions for 2023 while other players are cutting back on functions like engineering and product design. Australia is where we started and it’s where we have some of our largest engineering and product teams so we want to keep building on the great pool of talent that are helping make us the go-to financial suite for modern businesses.”

Now one of Australia’s highest valued private technology companies, Airwallex was co-founded in Melbourne by Mr Zhang and three of his university friends in 2015. It was the fastest Australian start-up to ever reach a $1bn valuation. The fintech’s platform allows other businesses to operate internationally, by enabling quick cross-border transactions.

Airwallex was most recently valued at $US5.5bn ($7.91bn) in a November funding round when it sought $US100m in financing, taking its total raised to $US900m from investors Square Peg, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Lone Pine Capital, Hermitage Capital, 1835i Ventures and Tencent, as well as Hostplus and a North American pension fund.

Fears of a global recession and market turmoil have caused tech valuations to plummet across the board, leading to widespread lay-offs.

After a pandemic hiring spree, Google’s parent company Alphabet last week laid off 12,000 staff, about 6 per cent of its workforce, with the company’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, telling employees in a letter that the tech giant had hired too quickly.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai. Picture: AFP

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Mr Pichai wrote.

“As an almost 25-year-old company, we’re bound to go through difficult economic cycles. These are important moments to sharpen our focus, re-engineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities.”

Microsoft, meanwhile, plans to cut 10,000 workers; Amazon 18,000, including engineers; Salesforce 10 per cent of its workforce; and Facebook parent company Meta is shedding 11,000 workers.

Airwallex has avoided lay-offs and is expecting to have open roles for an extra 300 to 500 staff on top of its existing 1300, an increase of up to 40 per cent and includes 90 Australia-based roles. The company has 200 staff locally.

“We’re one of the few companies investing at scale in high-skilled engineers and technology talent,” Mr Zhang said.

“We know that more high-quality talent means more innovation, which means even better products and even happier customers.”

He told the panel that through the Covid-19 pandemic and this year, the way in which companies and consumers used technology had shifted permanently, a change that shouldn’t be underestimated.

“With countries opening up – including China – and the world returning to ‘normal’, the danger is businesses and entrepreneurs fall back into old ways and forget that consumers and business customers actually liked some of the new ways of doing things and they won’t disappear,” he told the an event at the WEF at the weekend.

“Navigating the differences between ‘East’ and ‘West’ to run a business that can operate successfully under very different environments also requires a new generation of leaders and a new way of thinking.”