Vincent Huguet had already co-founded Dromadaire and Ooprint when he started Hopwork in 2013 with Hugo Lassiège and Jean-Baptiste Lemée. The company drew on the Airbnb model and built a freelancer community first, with apéros freelance meetups.
It raised €5 million in December 2016 and was renamed Malt in November 2017. By February 2019 it had 100,000 freelancers and 15,000 clients, and raised €25 million.
In June 2021 Malt raised €80 million from Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Eurazeo, ISAI and Serena. It passed 300,000 freelancers in January 2022 and joined the Next40 in February 2022.
Alexandre Fretti, who led the French business from May 2020, left in 2024. Malt put its 2024 business volume at €800 million and aims for €1 billion and group profitability. Huguet has said an IPO is not planned.