Hugo Lassiège is one of three co-founders of Malt, with Vincent Huguet and Jean-Baptiste Lemée. The company was founded in Paris in 2013 as Hopwork. Huguet had earlier co-founded Dromadaire and Ooprint.
Hopwork built a community of freelancers first, with meetups called apéros freelance and minimum rates, before it sold missions to large companies. It was renamed Malt in November 2017.
Funding came in three main rounds: €5 million in December 2016, €25 million in February 2019 and €80 million in June 2021 from Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Eurazeo, ISAI and Serena. By February 2019 it had 100,000 freelancers and 15,000 clients.
Malt joined the Next40 in February 2022. Its business volume reached about €800 million in 2024, and it takes a commission of about 10%. The company has been profitable in France for three years and is targeting group profitability.