Chicago Atlantic served as the sole arranger and administrative agent on a $30 million senior secured credit facility to Hugo Inc. (“Hugo”), a Chicago-headquartered provider of high-judgment Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and AI operations services. The financing will support Hugo’s strategic roll-up of specialized BPO and call center platforms, expanding its global delivery footprint and service depth.
Founded in 2017 by Orinola Gbadebo-Smith and Simone Bartlett, Hugo is a full-service BPO provider supporting customer experience, back-office, trust and safety, and AI operations for leading global enterprises. The company builds and manages distributed teams across Africa, enabling clients to scale complex, mission-critical workflows with speed, precision, and reliability.
“Hugo has earned a strong reputation for delivering high-judgment operational support to some of the world’s leading technology platforms,” said David Enright, Partner & Head of Direct Lending at Chicago Atlantic. “Their ability to combine speed, precision, and scale has made Hugo a trusted partner for mission-critical initiatives.”
Hugo’s differentiated model is built on elite talent, long-term partnership, and operational rigor. Only candidates with four-year or advanced degrees are staffed on live mandates, with a selective acceptance rate of approximately 2%, reflecting a recruitment standard on par with top-tier academic institutions. Through its proprietary HugoSphere™ platform, the company emphasizes durable team alignment rather than high turnover, with clients working alongside the same teams for an average of 3.5 years.
Today, Hugo supports operations with more than 4,500 employees globally and a vetted network of over 250,000 professionals. A strategic partner to the largest technology companies, Hugo is a preferred provider for complex, high-judgment workflows spanning text, image, audio, video, and multimodal evaluation. The company supports pre-launch and research-phase AI models, where precision, scale, and ethical nuance are critical.
“This financing marks a significant milestone in Hugo’s evolution,” said Kirill Pesterev, Chief Corporate Development Officer of Hugo. “With Chicago Atlantic as a partner, we are accelerating our strategy to acquire and integrate high-quality BPO platforms that share our commitment to elite talent, operational excellence, and long-term client partnerships. As demand for high-judgment, AI-adjacent operations continues to grow, this capital enables us to scale responsibly while preserving the standards our clients expect.”