Exclusive: Top FTSE executive recruiter goes bust after AI platform launch

A City-based boutique recruitment consultancy which has won executive-level talent for a host of FTSE firms has plunged into insolvency after pumping investment into an AI platform, City AM can reveal. Savannah Group, which has recruited directors and executives for the likes of Starbucks, hospitality giant Fullers, Burger King, Aston Martin, and global cruise titan Royal Caribbean, was listed for sale on insolvency marketplaces together with its AI platform MapX. Due to “financial pressure” on the recruitment company “it is anticipated a sale will be executed at the earliest opportunity”, the listing states.

According to the executive headhunter’s most recent companies house filings in July 2025, its revenue plummeted by 20 per cent the previous year, falling from £15.6m in 2023 to £12.4m in 2024.

Meanwhile its debt costs spiked to £270,100 in 2024, almost 5.5 times than the year before – a much more modest £49,300. Savannah Group’s net profit for 2024 was more than halved from £365,000 in 2023 to £102,870.

This follows City AM revealing last year that recruitment agencies were shutting for business at the fastest rate in fifteen years, since the financial crash, as companies quash hiring plans amid rising taxes and global economic uncertainty. Big tech talent drive Savannah Group began building MapX in 2019 to supposedly speed up the search process for top talent, later launching the tool for use by its consultants in 2022. In a bid to pivot away from using the AI platform internally only and potentially to move from being a more traditional headhunter to an AI-driven firm, Savannah Group said in a post on its website it launched MapX as a separate company after clients asked about using the tool themselves “to improve their in-house executive talent acquisition efforts.”

In February 2023, the headhunter officially launched MapX to the public as part of a rebranding effort, and injected capital into poaching “world-class” engineers and data scientists “from firms