Clay's AI Sales Automation Soars to $3.1B Valuation with New Funding
Sales automation startup Clay has successfully raised $100 million in a Series C funding round, propelling its valuation to $3.1 billion, a figure more than double its previous assessment. The round was led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund. Existing investors Meritech Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, BoxGroup, and Boldstart Ventures also participated, alongside new investor Sapphire Ventures.
This latest funding follows closely on the heels of a rapid succession of financing activities for the New York-based company. Just six months prior, Clay announced a $40 million Series B extension round led by Meritech Capital, which valued the company at $1.25 billion. In May, a tender offer led by Sequoia further increased its valuation to $1.5 billion. With the current infusion, Clay’s total capital raised since its inception in 2017 now stands at $204 million. The company noted that it has not yet utilized the funds from its most recent previous round.
Clay’s platform is designed to transform traditional sales and marketing operations by building automated workflows. These workflows, according to the company, can research thousands of prospects, personalize outreach at scale, and identify revenue opportunities that would be impossible to find manually. The platform integrates with over 150 data sources, enabling its AI agents to conduct advanced research. Examples include monitoring competitor mentions to trigger personalized campaigns or analyzing satellite imagery to predict customer fit by counting warehouse parking spots.
A significant innovation highlighted by Clay is a new professional category it terms "Go-to-Market (GTM) engineering." Kareem Amin, CEO and co-founder of Clay, stated that GTM engineering represents "the first true AI-native profession" and is poised to become "tech’s next big job category." Clay was founded by Amin, with Varun Anand joining as co-founder in 2021. Anand explained via email that Clay first coined the role of GTM engineering in 2023. He elaborated, stating that GTM engineers "combine growth acumen with AI and automation to build revenue engines." Anand added, "We call it ‘engineering’ because they work within certain parameters to build scaled systems — but instead of coding software, they’re coding revenue."
The newly secured capital will primarily fuel the growth of GTM engineering and facilitate major product upgrades. These upgrades include the development of autonomous agents for research and messaging, enhanced capabilities for utilizing first-party data, and improved signal detection.
While specific revenue figures were not disclosed, Clay reported that its revenue is projected to more than triple this year. The company boasts a customer base exceeding 10,000, including notable names such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Canva, Intercom, and Rippling.
CapitalG, in a recent blog post, articulated its investment rationale, highlighting extensive research over the past 18 months involving conversations with over 100 sales and marketing leaders. This research aimed to develop a perspective on the next era of go-to-market technology and how AI would fundamentally change the landscape. Jane Alexander, formerly CMO of Carta, and CapitalG investor Will Noddings stated their conviction that Clay is poised to become the "de facto go-to-market platform for the AI era." They further criticized the traditional approach, where Go-to-Market teams have long grappled with a "Frankenstein’s monster of disconnected tools" – a collection of point solutions that address individual pain points but lack holistic integration. They concluded that Clay offers revenue teams "a single platform from which they can launch any campaign, limited only by their imaginations."