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HR and Workplace

Semos Cloud 2025 Year in Review 

Author: Dimitar Nikolov Last updated: December 23, 2025 Reading time: 10 minutes

AI transformation, Total Rewards Hub evolution, and ecosystem growth

Thank you, and a quick look back

Looking back at 2025, we’re delighted to see a year defined by AI transformation, meaningful product breakthroughs, and continued growth, all made possible by our people, partners, and the customers who trusted us to help shape their Employee Experience.

This year, we made a bold bet: that AI could move from experiment to operating system in Employee Experience. But the real mission was not just shipping AI features. It was solving the challenges our customers face every day. Enterprises struggle to make total rewards visible when employees only see base salary. Managers want to lead well but drown in administrative work. HR teams need to activate culture consistently across thousands of employees, but fragmented tools make that nearly impossible.

In 2025, we built infrastructure to change that. We made recognition smarter without sacrificing authenticity. We turned Total Rewards from static statements into dynamic experiences. We gave managers AI agents that handle the repetitive parts of leadership so they can focus on the human elements. And we did it while expanding partnerships, growing our team, and showing up where it mattered most.

The results exceeded our expectations.

2025 in numbers

In 2025, organizations using Semos Cloud ran recognition, celebrations, rewards, and communications at scale, and we pushed AI deeper into the workflows that shape day-to-day Employee Experience.

Scoreboard (2025):

These numbers represent consistent, repeat usage across core workflows. Not campaign spikes, but genuine adoption at scale.

What this means for customers

Behind these numbers are real shifts in how organizations activate Employee Experience.

Recognition became both easier and better

Teams that used to struggle with low participation or generic “great job” messages now have AI support that helps people articulate appreciation meaningfully, with quality standards ensuring recognition stays genuine as it scales.

Total Rewards moved from invisible to understood

Employees who once focused only on base salary now see their full compensation package, benefits, and rewards in one clear view. HR teams spend less time answering “what am I actually getting paid?” and more time having strategic retention conversations.

Managers got focused support instead of generic assistants

Instead of one AI trying to do everything poorly, seven specialized agents now help with specific leadership tasks, like recognition, feedback, career development, and company knowledge, removing administrative friction without replacing human judgment.

AI transformation across Employee Experience

A big part of 2025 was applying AI to where it matters most: recognition, celebrations, and feedback. The goal was practical: reduce friction, raise quality, and make it easier for teams to participate consistently.

AI recognition and celebrations

We added AI support across recognition and celebration flows, making it easier for employees to recognize each other meaningfully:

  • AI-Generated Recognition Messages: Employees can now get AI support when writing recognition messages, helping them articulate appreciation even when they’re short on time or words.
  • Smart Suggestions for Recognition Recipients: The system proactively suggests colleagues who deserve recognition based on collaboration patterns and recent contributions, helping employees broaden their recognition circles.
  • Message Quality Indicator (MQI): As participation grows, quality needs a shared standard. MQI sets a minimum quality bar for recognition messages, ensuring that as recognition scales, it stays meaningful. This was one of our most important launches. It gave teams permission to use AI because there was a quality floor protecting the culture.
  • AI-Generated Celebration Messages: Birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones now get AI-enhanced personalization, making automated celebrations feel less robotic and more genuine.

Feedback Intelligence

When it comes to feedback, the challenge is rarely collecting input. It’s turning input into clarity.

In 2025, we focused on making feedback faster to create and easier to understand:

  • AI-Enhanced Feedback Creation: Managers can now draft feedback with AI assistance that helps them stay specific, balanced, and actionable without the three-hour writing session.
  • Feedback Analytics: Pattern recognition across feedback helps surface themes that would take weeks to spot manually, turning “we collected a lot of feedback” into “here’s what it means and what to do about it.”

The aim is faster signal and clearer patterns, so feedback doesn’t stop at “interesting” and actually becomes usable.

Total Rewards Hub: making value visible

Total Rewards is one of the biggest investments organizations make. It’s also one of the hardest to communicate consistently.

In 2025, we treated Total Rewards Hub as a product experience, not a static statement. The focus was making value easier to see, easier to communicate, and easier to use.

Experience enhancements

  • Improved User Experience: We redesigned the Total Rewards Hub interface to be clearer, faster, and more intuitive, because if employees can’t understand their rewards, they can’t appreciate them.
  • Built-in Communication and Feedback Tools: Total Rewards Hub now has native tools for sending targeted communications and collecting feedback on benefits and compensation.
  • Flexible Benefits: Introduced flexible benefits that let employees use allocated budgets across eligible benefit options, with rules set by role, location, and eligibility.
  • Deeper Analytics: Enhanced reporting shows not just what’s in the Total Rewards package, but how employees are engaging with it: which benefits get used, which communications get opened, and where understanding gaps exist.
total rewards analytics

Manager Agents: redefining leadership support

2025 was the year we introduced Manager Agents through Semos.ai, our most ambitious product launch to date and a bet on the future of leadership support.

Seven specialized agents, one focused mission

Instead of building a single AI assistant trying to do everything (and doing nothing particularly well), we built seven specialized agents, each designed to support managers in a specific leadership domain:

  • Recognition Agent: Helps managers give timely, meaningful recognition
  • Feedback Agent: Supports clear, actionable, bias-free feedback
  • Career & Growth Agent: Guides development conversations and career planning
  • Company Agent: Provides instant access to policies, procedures, and company knowledge
  • Culture Agent: Helps managers understand and reinforce team culture
  • HRBP Agent: Connects managers with HR support and resources
  • Meeting Agent: Assists with meeting preparation, facilitation, and follow-up

Why this matters

Early deployments taught us something important: managers don’t need AI to replace their judgment. They need AI to handle the repetitive, time-consuming parts of leadership so they can focus on the human elements that actually matter.

In pilot deployments, managers using Recognition Agent saved an average of 3 hours per week on recognition admin while quality scores improved by 40%. That’s not about AI doing the thinking. It’s about AI removing friction so good managers can be great, and average managers can be good.

This launch positions Semos at the forefront of a new category: agentic leadership support. We’re not building AI that replaces managers. We’re building AI that makes every manager as effective as your best manager.

semos.ai - AI manager agents

Ecosystem growth: partnerships that matter

In 2025, our ecosystem grew stronger than ever, not just in numbers, but in strategic depth.

Workday partnership

We became an official Workday partner in 2025, expanding our reach beyond our SAP SuccessFactors roots and positioning Semos Cloud as a true “big three” HCM integration partner.

SAP Spotlight+ recognition

We earned SAP Spotlight+ designation for our Total Rewards solution, a validation of both technical excellence and commercial traction in the SAP ecosystem. This designation puts us in great company and strengthens our position as the go-to EX platform for SAP customers.

New strategic partners

We welcomed five new partners to the Semos Cloud ecosystem, each bringing regional expertise and customer relationships that help us serve enterprises better:

  • Sandrine Bardot: Adding regional coverage and localized support
  • EX3: Bringing Employee Experience consulting depth
  • Omnia: Renewed partnership with reimagined go-to-market approach
  • HRPath: Strengthening our SAP SuccessFactors implementation capabilities
  • Veritas Prime: Expanding our reach in key verticals

These partnerships aren’t just about channel reach. They’re about building a network of experts who can help customers maximize their Semos Cloud investment.

Global presence: where we showed up

In 2025, we showed up where our customers and partners needed us:

  • 27 conferences and events across HR tech, Employee Experience, and SAP ecosystem gatherings
  • 10 countries where we connected with customers, partners, and prospects
  • 3 continents of active engagement

These events weren’t just about booth presence. They were about learning what’s changing in the market, sharing what we’re building, and staying connected to the real challenges our customers face every day.

Team growth: the people behind the platform

Behind every release, every customer deployment, and every product innovation, there’s a team executing with excellence.

In 2025, we welcomed 26 talented people to Semos across 3 continents, each bringing fresh perspective and expertise that continues to drive our innovation forward. Through 9 internal workshops, we invested in our team’s growth and development, because the platform is only as good as the people building it.

The collective effort of our expanded team made it possible to meet and exceed our goals, and we’re excited about the future we’ll build together.

Semos Cloud team members at various corporate retreats, volunteering events, and social gatherings.

What we learned in 2025

Three simple lessons we’re carrying into 2026:

  1. Quality follows simplicity
    When recognition, feedback, or Total Rewards are easier to complete, they happen more often. But ease without quality becomes noise. That’s why MQI matters. It’s the minimum standard that keeps participation meaningful as it scales.
  2. Specialization beats generalization
    Manager Agents proved that seven focused AI agents beat one general-purpose assistant. People don’t want AI that does everything okay. They want AI that does specific jobs exceptionally well.
  3. Ecosystems multiply impact
    Our Workday partnership and SAP Spotlight+ designation didn’t just validate our technology. They unlocked network effects. Partners bring credibility, integrations bring stickiness, and together they create a moat that point solutions can’t match.

Looking ahead to 2026

As we reflect on 2025, we’re filled with optimism for what comes next. The growth we experienced is a testament to the hard work of our team, the trust of our customers, and the strength of our partnerships.

We’re not just shipping features. We’re building the infrastructure layer for Employee Experience. In 2026, we’ll continue pushing the boundaries of what AI can do in EX, expanding our “big three” HCM integrations, and helping enterprises turn fragmented EX tools into unified operating systems.

To our people. To our clients. To our partners. To everyone who believed in the work we do.

2025 raised the bar. 2026 will exceed it.

Next steps

What is Semos Cloud? 

Semos Cloud is an Employee Experience platform for recognition, rewards, communications, Total Rewards, and feedback – designed for enterprises running SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, or Oracle HCM. 

What is Total Rewards Hub? 

Total Rewards Hub is the Semos Cloud experience that helps employees understand their full compensation and benefits package, with AI-powered tools for HR to create, communicate, and analyze Total Rewards at scale. 

What is MQI? 

MQI (Message Quality Indicator) is a minimum quality standard for recognition messages within Semos Cloud. It ensures recognition stays meaningful as participation scales. 

What is Feedback Intelligence? 

Feedback Intelligence includes AI-enhanced feedback creation (helping managers write better feedback faster) and feedback analytics (surfacing patterns and themes across feedback data). Both launched in 2025. 

What are Manager Agents?

Manager Agents are part of Semos.ai, launched in 2025. Seven specialized AI agents support managers in specific leadership domains: Recognition, Feedback, Career & Growth, Company Knowledge, Culture, HRBP connection, and Meetings. 

How many recognitions were shared on Semos Cloud in 2025? 

4.8 million recognitions were shared by organizations using Semos Cloud in 2025, up from 4 million in 2024.