Riviera Partners has purchased the AI startup recruitment firm Lateral Labs as the competition for talent transforms the executive search landscape.

      **TL;DR** Riviera Partners is acquiring Lateral Labs, an AI startup recruiter established by a former OpenAI recruiter, to enhance its talent search capabilities in AI and ML.

      Riviera Partners, an executive search firm backed by Insight Partners, known for placing technology leaders at companies like Uber, Snowflake, Figma, and Discord, is set to acquire Lateral Labs, a recruiting agency that specializes in AI startups. This acquisition will incorporate Lateral Labs’ clients, including Cursor, ElevenLabs, Runway, Scale AI, and Luma Labs, into one of the largest tech-focused search firms in the industry.

      Founded in 2024 by Rob Infantino, who previously recruited for OpenAI and Amazon Web Services, Lateral Labs offers embedded, retained, and contingent searches for roles in machine learning and AI research. It positions itself as a specialist in understanding the technical profiles needed by AI firms. The financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed.

      This move is part of a larger trend in executive search. Founded in 2002 and responsible for thousands of leadership placements over the years, Riviera has been on a string of acquisitions, previously merging with Build Talent, Board and Technology, and Arete Partners to broaden its reach within venture-backed and private equity-backed companies.

      Kyle Langworthy, an executive at Riviera, noted that “as few as two percent of companies are organizationally ready to execute with AI,” a figure lower than other industry assessments, which estimate that about one-third of organizations are fully prepared for AI implementation, according to surveys by workforce firms monitoring the AI hiring landscape. ManpowerGroup’s 2026 data revealed that 72 percent of employers worldwide are struggling to fill open positions, particularly in AI and machine learning.

      Infantino remarked that Lateral Labs was created to assist AI companies in hiring from their initial technical recruit to IPO. The firm's client list highlights the concentrated nature of the AI talent market. For instance, Cursor, an AI coding platform, was reportedly discussing raising two billion dollars at a valuation surpassing 50 billion dollars earlier this year, while ElevenLabs secured 500 million dollars at an 11 billion dollar valuation in February. These companies are in the greatest competition for AI researchers, and Lateral Labs has been instrumental in placing candidates within them.

      The acquisition signifies the intensified competition for AI talent, which has evolved from individual hires to infrastructure-level rivalries. Meta’s reported spending of one and a half billion dollars on a single engineer from Thinking Machines Lab, alongside OpenAI’s acknowledgment of signing bonuses reaching up to 100 million dollars, underscores the need for recruiting firms to enhance their pipelines to meet this demand.

      Research conducted by Riviera supports this trend. Their AI Hiring Blueprint 2026 report, which analyzes hundreds of executive searches, indicates that companies seek AI leaders capable of collaborating across product, finance, and operations while effectively communicating with boards and building sustainable teams. The availability of candidates with this skill set remains limited.

      The acquisition also positions Riviera in close competition with new AI-native recruiting startups. Dex, an AI talent agency based in London with ElevenLabs as a client, raised five million dollars in a seed round in April and employs conversational AI to create detailed candidate profiles instead of using conventional search methods.

      Riviera believes that the traditional recruiting model can still thrive if executed swiftly. The firm employs a proprietary platform utilizing machine learning to assess and forecast candidate compatibility, while its fundamental business model remains focused on relationship-driven executive search. Integrating Lateral Labs provides a direct connection to the AI startup ecosystem where many of the most competitive hiring efforts are taking place.

      It remains uncertain whether established search firms or AI-native recruiting methods will dominate the AI talent market. However, the undeniable factor is the overwhelming demand, with approximately 1,600,000 AI job openings globally compared to only 518,000 qualified candidates, as indicated by Second Talent’s 2026 analysis.

      By the end of the year, over 90 percent of global enterprises are anticipated to confront significant skills shortages. For Riviera, acquiring Lateral Labs represents a strategic move, anticipating that firms recruiting AI leaders will need to specialize, consolidate, and operate as swiftly as the organizations they support.