Envoy Search notes that OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon are all spending billions to staff these teams.

Envoy Search is a retained executive search firm built for growth-focused software companies. We work one market — software — and every discipline on the leadership team. Founder-led, venture-backed, or private equity-backed: the cap table doesn't change the problem. What matters is whether the leadership team can carry the company through its next stage. Our approach is deliberately low volume. We accept a limited number of engagements each year so that every search is senior-led from start to finish. The person you hire is the person who builds the map, makes the calls, and sits in the debriefs. There is no handoff to an associate after the kickoff. Because we are organized by market rather than by function, you are never routed to whichever practice happens to own the title. That is what lets us build teams rather than fill seats. A partner who already knows your business, your stage, and your story is faster on the second search than the first, and faster still on the third. We pair that with AI-augmented research. The tooling makes the market map wider and faster; the judgment on a shortlist stays human. We would rather bring four candidates we believe in than twelve we can defend. Envoy Search continues an 18-year lineage. Our founder co-founded Savage Partners in 2005 and built it into one of the country's leading boutique technology search firms before its 2023 acquisition by Russell Reynolds Associates, where he went on to lead the Product & Technology practice within the global Software sector — more than 500 executive placements across that run. Now back to the boutique, and back to the work: we build the teams that build software.