More Than a Salary: How Zenseact used internal branding to win the war for AI talent

Sammanfattning

In 2020, Zenuity was split up and the new company, Zenseact became a subsidiary to the car manufacturer Volvo Cars, owning 86,5% of the company. In the end of 2022, Volvo Cars acquired the rest of the company and became fully owner of Zenseact. Being a knowledge heavy company with ambitious developers at the core of the organization, Zenseact develops driving assistance software powered by advanced technique and innovation. However, internal concerns arose regarding the corporate identity. On one hand the company wanted to be cool, techy and disruptive. On the other hand, they wanted to be more than that, being a company with “people at heart” defining their culture, something that was not clearly communicated. When working with the identity, questions like “how progressive can we be to not distance ourselves too much from the mothership?” were asked as well as how to be a modern, diverse and innovative tech company. Moreover, the AI tech market is highly competitive in terms of competing for the best talents. This led to reasonings on how to develop the company in order to compete against firms offering higher salaries for the same talents.