Clay Labs Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to make business-to-business sales teams more productive, today announced that it has raised $115 million in funding.
Wellington Management led the Series D round. It was joined by Alphabet Inc.’s growth-stage CapitalG fund, Sequoia, Meritech and several others. Clay is now valued at $7.1 billion, $2.1 billion more than at the start of the year.
Sales teams spend a significant portion of their time searching for potential buyers. Clay’s platform uses AI to automate the task. It enables salespeople to find leads by entering a description of their target audience into a chat box. For example, an employee of an antivirus startup could ask Clay to find cybersecurity professionals at large enterprises.
The platform surfaces not only high-level company details but also business events that may create deal opportunities. For example, a consumer goods manufacturer could use Clay to find retailers that recently opened new stores.
The platform enables users to enrich their lead data with information from more than 200 external sources. Usually, companies have to sign a separate contract with each sales data provider, which can slow down growth initiatives. Clay sources information through a single contract to streamline the workflow.
Incorporating third-party data into sales campaigns also comes with other challenges. When salespeople wish to enrich a lead record, they must manually search every single external data source for relevant details. Clay provides a feature called Waterfall that automates the task. It scans external databases one by one until it finds the required information.
Once the lead records requested by a user are ready, Clay prioritizes them based on their revenue potential. The platform takes into account factors such as company size and recent business milestones. It automatically refreshes the dataset when new information becomes available.
Clay’s built-in AI drafts outreach emails tailored to the leads that it identifies. If a prospect expresses interest in a product, the platform can help salespeople create a personalized pitch complete with a slide deck. Clay is also capable of generating follow-up emails and ad campaigns.
Customers can customize the platform by creating AI agents. Those agents mix and match Clay’s automation features to perform multi-step sales tasks. Additionally, users can customize details such as the format in which agents output the lead data they collect.
“We started by aggregating the best data for B2B companies. Then we built the infrastructure to run any personalized campaign on top of it,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Kareem Amin (pictured, left, with co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Varun Anand). “Now we’re building agents that can help grow your company for you.”
The company disclosed today that its platform is used by more than 17,000 customers including Anthropic PBC, OpenAI Group PBC and other major tech firms. The New York Times reported that Clay’s annualized revenue is on track to reach $200 million by the end of the quarter. It was briefly profitable earlier this year.
