Clay: The AI CRM tool that just hit $30M in ARR 3 years from launch

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Hi 👋, this is the Today in AI Newsletter: The weekly newsletter bringing you one step closer to building your own startup.

We analyze a cool, industry-shaping AI startup every week, with a full breakdown of what they do, how they make money, how much they’ve raised, and the opportunity ahead. 

Let’s get to the good stuff in this email: 

• 📈 This AI tool helps you build a sales funnel exactly like a software tool

• 🚀 They hit $30 million in ARR just 3 years from launch with over 5,000 enterprise customers including OpenAI, Anthropic & Canva

• 💰 They’ve raised a $40M Series B at a $1.5B valuation led by Meritech

So what’s the startup and who are the founders behind it? Here’s the story of Clay and Kareem Amin 📈

Clay was founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin, Varun Anand and Nicolae Rusan with the mission to give growth teams the superpowers of software engineers. 

Clay is a GTM development environment that pulls in data from over 75 sources, feeds it to LLMs, and lets users creatively build personalized outreach at scale—whether that’s an email, a website, or a handwritten letter. 📬

It’s designed as a creative tool for growth, providing flexibility and building blocks to users rather than a rigid, single-solution approach. 

It operates on the principle of “make it work then make it simple” and believes “there's always a way” to achieve desired outcomes. 🔧

Clay isn’t just selling software. It’s selling a new way of thinking about how businesses grow. 

Instead of automating sales into oblivion, Clay hands the paintbrush to the user. 🎨

It’s a product for people who want to feel smart, and more importantly—who want to grow.

Kareem Amin and his team didn’t just build a unicorn. They reimagined the GTM function itself, blending imagination with automation in a way only AI could make possible. 🦄

Clay isn’t trying to replace salespeople. It’s trying to turn them into engineers.