deel

Description

Deel is a platform that enables companies to hire, onboard, and pay employees and contractors globally. The company was founded in 2019 by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang, who met while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It was accepted into Y Combinator the same year.

Deel is registered in the United States and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. It has raised approximately $650 million in funding from various investors, including prominent figures and firms such as Emilie Choi (President and COO at Coinbase), Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify), Anthony Schiller (Co-Managing Director at Green Bay Ventures), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), Jeffrey Katzenberg (Tech Innovator and Investor), and Jeff Wilke (Chairman of Re:Build).

Deel helps companies collect employee timesheets, calculate gross wages, deductions, and taxes, and issue payments. It facilitates payments in multiple currencies, including cryptocurrencies. 

In early 2025, the company was accused of enabling money laundering. This accusation came in the form of a class action lawsuit filed by a trustee representing victims of a Ponzi scheme carried out through an entity known as Surge Capital.

In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found this entity to have engaged in fraud.

In the lawsuit, Deel is accused of facilitating, though not directly, the movement of part of the stolen funds to Russian entities and, therefore, failing to comply with AML and KYC laws and US sanctions imposed on Russia.

The company has claimed that the allegations are part of an effort by a competitor to tarnish their name.