Clay Raises $115M at a $7.1 Billion Valuation, More Than Double Its 2025 Price
Clay has raised $115 million in a Series D round, valuing the New York go-to-market software company at a staggering $7.1 billion. Wellington Management led the round, with existing investors including Sequoia, StepStone, Andreessen Horowitz’s Perennial fund, Meritech, DST, CapitalG, BoxGroup, Boldstart, Bloomberg Beta, and Evolution, returning alongside them.
Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan founded Clay in 2017, later joined by Varun Anand in 2021. Originally, the platform aimed to make programming accessible to non-coders, but it has since focused on sales and marketing teams, helping them find and qualify prospects using AI agents.
The platform pulls together various data points from a company’s records, such as CRM data, product usage, calls, and emails. It then incorporates external signals like funding rounds, hiring activity, and job changes. AI agents analyze this comprehensive data to identify prospects, research them, and schedule outreach.
As an example, Clay can book meetings with fintech marketing leaders and adjust sales materials based on the prospects’ questions and the AI’s observations.
Key Features and Customers:
- Serves over 17,000 customers, including 80% of the Forbes AI 50 private AI companies (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe).
- Introduced the term "GTM engineers" to describe professionals building these revenue systems, with thousands now working under this title.
- Investing $1 million into a scholarship fund to train more GTM engineers.
Rapid Growth and Competition:
The valuation has increased significantly since January, when an employee tender offer valued Clay at $5 billion. The company has not disclosed its revenue, making the jump difficult to verify.
Competition is intense, with established data providers and startups alike offering AI-driven solutions. Examples include Apollo.io’s acquisition of Pocus, ZoomInfo, and startups like 11x, which aim to replace sales roles entirely.