Ghent-based startup Ringtime has secured €1.8 million in funding to scale its conversational AI agent, a tool built to help European businesses cope with persistent labour shortages.

The round positions Ringtime within a growing field of European HR-tech ventures applying conversational AI to recruitment and workforce management. The company's agent automates candidate and employee communication, a function that labour-intensive sectors — hospitality among them — increasingly need as vacancy rates across the eurozone remain elevated.

For European hospitality operators, the development matters for a straightforward reason: staffing is now a structural constraint, not a cyclical one. Hotels, restaurants and catering groups across the bloc have reported chronic difficulty filling frontline roles since the pandemic, and automation of high-volume recruitment workflows directly reduces the administrative burden on stretched HR teams.

Ringtime plans to use the €1.8 million to develop its product further and expand its market reach across Europe. The company is based in Ghent, Belgium, and operates within the region's active startup ecosystem.

The funding signals continued investor appetite for AI applications that address operational bottlenecks rather than consumer-facing novelty. Labour scarcity affects hospitality, logistics, retail and healthcare across the EU, and conversational agents that can handle scheduling, candidate screening and routine employee queries at scale offer a measurable productivity case.

European hotel groups and restaurant chains have already shifted parts of their hiring funnels to automated chat and voice tools. A new, well-capitalised entrant from Belgium adds competitive pressure on established HR-software vendors serving the sector, including applicant-tracking providers that have been slower to add conversational layers.

The exact composition of the round — whether it combines equity and grants, or which lead investors participated — has not been disclosed in the announcement.

Ringtime will next deploy the capital against product development and European market expansion, with operators in labour-constrained sectors the likely first targets for its agent.