What is Gusto?
All-in-one payroll, HR, and benefits platform built for small and mid-sized businesses
- Category
- HR Tech / Payroll Software
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, CA
- Founded
- 2012 (as ZenPayroll)
- Employees
- ~4,400 (May 2026)
- Total Funding
- $746M+
- Valuation
- $9.3B (June 2025 tender offer)
What is Gusto?
Gusto is a cloud-based payroll, HR, and benefits platform built for small and mid-sized businesses, serving more than 500,000 companies across the United States and crossing $1 billion in trailing twelve-month revenue as of early 2026.
Founded in 2012 as ZenPayroll and rebranded to Gusto in 2015, the company automates the full employer-of-record stack: payroll processing with automatic federal and state tax filings, employee onboarding, health and dental benefits administration, 401(k) management, time tracking, and compliance management. The platform is built for SMB operators who lack dedicated HR teams, wrapping complex compliance requirements into a self-service experience. Its AI assistant Gus, launched in 2025, handles routine HR and payroll questions, saves an estimated six hours per week per user, and resolves approximately 50% of customer-support cases without a human agent.
Gusto has grown revenue from roughly $500M in 2023 to $750M in 2024 to $975M in 2025, and crossed $1 billion in trailing twelve-month revenue in February 2026 — a 30%-plus year-over-year pace that CEO Josh Reeves attributes to acceleration over each of the last five consecutive quarters. The company crossed 500,000 direct SMB customers in April 2026 and serves an additional 700,000+ businesses through its accounting-firm partner channel.
Gusto acquired Guideline, a 401(k) provider serving 65,000+ plans and $20B in retirement assets, in August 2025, and followed with the acquisition of compliance platform Mosey in April 2026. With more than 500,000 direct customers and a leading position in the SMB payroll segment, Gusto competes against incumbents ADP and Paychex and modern challengers like Rippling, all while remaining cash-flow positive for multiple years.
What does Gusto offer?
Gusto offers an integrated suite spanning payroll, HR administration, benefits, compliance, and financial tools targeted at SMBs with 1–500 employees.
- Full-Service Payroll· Core Platform
- Automatic Tax Filing· Core Platform
- Multi-State Payroll· Core Platform
- Contractor Payments· Core Platform
- Employee Onboarding· HR
- Certified HR Pro Access· HR
- Benefits Administration· Benefits
- Health Insurance· Benefits
- Dental & Vision· Benefits
- 401(k) / Retirement Plans (via Guideline)· Benefits
- Workers' Compensation· Benefits
- Time Tracking & PTO· Workforce Management
- HR Compliance (via Mosey)· Compliance
- State & Local Registrations· Compliance
- Gusto Wallet (Employee Financial Tools)· Financial
- Gus AI Assistant· AI / Automation
- Accountant Partner Platform· Partnerships
- Custom Reporting· Analytics
How does Gusto make money?
Gusto earns revenue through a base-fee-plus-per-seat SaaS subscription model, tiered by feature depth, with additional upside from benefits carrier revenue share, financial products, and professional-services add-ons.
Gusto's three published tiers (as of 2026) are: Simple at $49/month + $6 per employee/month (single-state payroll, basic onboarding, employee self-service); Plus at $80/month + $12 per employee/month (multi-state payroll, time tracking, advanced HR tools); and Premium at $180/month + $22 per employee/month (certified HR professionals on call, priority support, payroll migration, custom reports). Gusto raised the Simple plan base from $40 to $49 in March 2025, a 22% increase that demonstrates meaningful pricing power over its highly sticky customer base. Contractor-only plans are also available starting at $35/month plus $6 per contractor.
Beyond subscriptions, Gusto captures economics across the benefits and financial stack. It earns commissions from health insurance carriers whose plans it sells, revenue share from 401(k) assets under management (accelerated by the Guideline acquisition in August 2025, which added 65,000+ retirement plans and $20B in AUM), and interchange on Gusto Wallet debit-card spending. The accountant channel — more than 10,000 accounting firms that white-label or resell Gusto — provides a high-velocity, low-CAC distribution path that expands the addressable base without proportional sales spend.
Growth is driven by a land-and-expand model: businesses start on Simple and upgrade as headcount grows, adding benefits modules and compliance tools. The 2025 Guideline acquisition and 2026 Mosey acquisition deepen the suite, increasing ARPU per customer and reinforcing switching costs. Gusto has been cash-flow positive for several years — an unusual distinction in the venture-backed HR tech category — and has not required primary equity capital since its 2022 Series E extension.
Who leads Gusto?
Gusto is led by its three co-founders — all Stanford electrical engineering alumni — plus a seasoned CFO from GitHub and a Chief Commercial Officer from Shopify hired in 2025.
- Joshua ReevesCEO & Co-Founder2012–presentStanford EE graduate; previously co-founded Unwrap; sets long-term product and company vision. Known for a stakeholder-capitalism ethos and a long-term orientation that has kept Gusto private through multiple IPO windows.
- Edward KimCo-Founder & Head of Technology (CTO)2012–presentStanford EE; previously founded and served as CEO of photo-printing startup Picwing; leads all engineering and platform architecture at Gusto, overseeing the Rails-centric monolith and the Gusto Embedded Payroll API.
- Tomer LondonCo-Founder & Chief Product Officer2012–presentStanford EE; drives product strategy and roadmap, overseeing the platform's expansion from payroll into benefits, compliance, AI (Gus assistant), and financial services.
- Mike TaylorChief Financial OfficerJanuary 2022–presentFormer CFO of GitHub (2016–2022), where he managed the company through Microsoft's $7.5B acquisition; earlier roles at Tesla (VP Finance) and Benchmark Capital; JD and MBA from Stanford; leads finance as Gusto approaches public-market readiness.
- Ritu KhannaChief Commercial OfficerApril 2025–presentFormer VP Global Partnerships & Monetization at Shopify; earlier at PayPal and RBC; joined to drive revenue expansion, partnership monetization, and the accounting partner ecosystem.
- Ian WatsonChief Customer OfficerMarch 2024–presentLeads customer success, onboarding, and support; responsible for the AI-assisted support initiatives that now resolve approximately 50% of tier-1 customer inquiries via the Gus assistant.
How do you contact Gusto's leadership?
Gusto's verified email format is first.last@gusto.com (used by the vast majority of staff per SignalHire). The official press inbox is press@gusto.com. Executive emails below follow the verified company format and are not independently confirmed personal inboxes — treat as pattern-derived unless noted.
joshua.reeves@gusto.comHow much funding has Gusto raised?
Gusto has raised more than $746M in equity across nine named rounds, most recently a $200M tender offer in June 2025 that valued the company at $9.3 billion.
Gusto's funding journey began with a $6.1M seed in December 2012 from Google Ventures (now GV), Sherpalo Ventures, Y Combinator, and Data Collective (DCVC). General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins led a $20M Series A in February 2014 at a roughly $100M valuation. CapitalG (Google's independent growth fund) led a $60M Series B in April 2015 at a $560M valuation, followed by an additional $22.2M close in December 2015 that lifted the valuation to $1 billion — Gusto's first unicorn moment.
A $90M extension (Series C tranche, October 2016) was again led by CapitalG, funding expansion into benefits brokerage and health insurance. In July 2018 a second Series C tranche of $145M closed with T. Rowe Price and Y Combinator Continuity participating, with MSD Capital co-investing. The Series D in July 2019 raised $200M at a $3.8B valuation, led by Fidelity Investments and Generation Investment Management — the company's single largest primary equity round to date. Gusto then raised $175M in a Series E in August 2021 at a $9.5B valuation led by T. Rowe Price, with Fidelity Management & Research, Generation Investment Management, Sands Capital, Durable Capital Partners, Emerson Collective, and Dragoneer among participating investors.
A Series E extension in May 2022 — undisclosed amount, with CapitalG and others — set the peak valuation at $10B. In June 2025, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (through its Teachers' Venture Growth arm) led a $200M secondary tender offer at a $9.3B valuation, providing employee liquidity at a modest discount to the 2022 peak but reflecting Gusto's multi-year cash-flow-positive status and accelerating revenue trajectory. No new primary equity has been raised since 2022.
How did Gusto get here?
Gusto was founded in 2012, reached unicorn status by 2015, crossed 500,000 customers and $1B in annual revenue in early 2026, all while remaining private and cash-flow positive.
- December 2012Founded as ZenPayroll (YC W12)Joshua Reeves, Edward Kim, and Tomer London launch in California after Y Combinator's Winter 2012 batch; raise $6.1M seed from GV, Sherpalo, DCVC, and YC.
- February 2014Series A — $20M at ~$100M valuationGeneral Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins lead Gusto's first institutional round, validating the SMB payroll thesis.
- September 2015Rebrands to Gusto; hits $1B valuationZenPayroll becomes Gusto to signal broader HR platform vision; CapitalG closes Series B at $560M, then extends to $1B valuation by December 2015.
- July 2019Series D — $200M at $3.8B valuationFidelity Investments and Generation Investment Management lead; Gusto passes 100,000 customers and expands into benefits brokerage.
- August 2021Series E — $175M at $9.5B valuationT. Rowe Price leads; co-investors include Fidelity, Generation, Sands Capital, Durable Capital, and Emerson Collective. Gusto's peak primary-round valuation.
- August 2025Acquires Guideline for ~$600MGusto buys SMB 401(k) provider Guideline (65,000+ plans, 1M+ savers, $20B AUM), vertically integrating retirement into its benefits stack. Guideline non-Gusto clients are subsequently moved to Accrue 401k.
- April 2026Acquires Mosey; crosses 500K customersGusto acquires compliance automation platform Mosey (founded 2021) to embed state and local registration, filings, and renewals directly into the payroll stack. Gusto announces 500,000 direct SMB customers and unveils 75 new product features at its Spring Showcase.
- May 2026Crosses $1B trailing revenueFortune and TechCrunch confirm $1B+ in trailing 12-month revenue, with growth accelerating over each of the last five quarters. A Gusto spokesperson declines to comment on IPO timing.
Who are Gusto's competitors?
Gusto competes with legacy payroll bureaus (ADP, Paychex) and modern SMB HR platforms (Rippling, Justworks, OnPay, QuickBooks Payroll), each taking a different slice of the employer-of-record stack.
- RipplingBroader platform combining HR, IT, and finance with 650+ integrations and a $16.8B valuation (May 2025) — higher feature ceiling than Gusto but more complex and expensive, targeting fast-scaling tech companies rather than pure SMBs.
- ADPLegacy incumbent with 900,000+ SMB customers on ADP RUN; market-leading brand recognition but a dated UI, opaque pricing, and a reputation for upselling that Gusto specifically targets in its positioning.
- Paychex50-year-old payroll bureau with strong mid-market and franchise vertical depth; perceived as less user-friendly and more phone-support-dependent than Gusto or Rippling.
- JustworksPEO (professional employer organization) model that co-employs workers to offer large-company benefits at small-company scale; a fundamentally different buying motion versus Gusto's pure SaaS.
- OnPaySingle flat-fee pricing ($40/month + $6/employee) with no base-fee tier increases; simpler and cheaper for very small teams but lacks Gusto's benefits breadth, 401(k) integration (via Guideline), and compliance tooling (via Mosey).
- QuickBooks PayrollIntuit's payroll add-on deeply embedded in the QuickBooks accounting ecosystem; wins with bookkeeper-managed businesses already on QuickBooks but offers shallower HR capabilities.
Gusto — frequently asked questions
