Clay, a San Francisco-based startup transforming outbound sales with AI, has raised $100 million in fresh funding at a $3 billion valuation.
The round was led by CapitalG (Alphabet’s independent growth fund), with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Meritech Capital, and others.
AI-first workflow for modern growth teams
Founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan, and Varun Anand, Clay offers a sales automation platform that goes beyond raw contact data. It pulls from 100+ data sources to enrich leads with social context, behavioral signals, and organizational insights, enabling personalized outreach at scale.
Instead of forcing reps to manually hunt and qualify leads, Clay automates:
- Lead research and enrichment
- Prospect segmentation
- Multi-channel outreach flows
- CRM integration
The result: leaner sales teams closing more deals with less grunt work.
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Outpacing traditional sales tech
Clay differentiates itself from platforms like ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, or Lusha by embedding AI-driven insights into every step of the sales process. Its no-code automation tools integrate directly with CRMs and email platforms, enabling even small teams to perform at enterprise scale.
The company reports growing demand from startups and growth-stage companies who want to shift their sales ops from manual to intelligent.
Capital to scale product and team
With the new funding, Clay plans to double down on:
- AI R&D, including predictive analytics and creative automation
- Global hiring across product, engineering, and go-to-market
- Expanding integrations and use cases for enterprise customers
The company also runs annual tender offers to support employee ownership — part of its broader mission to build a sustainable, inclusive business.
“Sales teams should be strategy-driven, not spreadsheet-driven,” said co-founder Kareem Amin. “Clay exists to eliminate the repetitive, manual work and let reps focus on high-impact conversations.”
