Clay

Clay operates a go-to-market (GTM) data and workflow platform used by sales and marketing teams to find prospect data, enrich it, and turn it into automated outreach and campaign activity. Work is organized in a spreadsheet-like table where each column can pull records from an external provider, apply AI to analyze or reformat data, run a web-research agent, generate personalized messaging, or execute a "waterfall" that queries multiple data providers in sequence until a verified result is returned. Users can build lists from provider integrations such as Apollo, CSV imports (for example LinkedIn Sales Navigator exports), Clay's own scraping of company and directory pages, and webhooks that feed inbound or intent-triggered records in real time.

The product set spans data infrastructure (audiences combining first- and third-party sources, a data marketplace of over 200 providers, job-change and other signal tracking, and waterfall enrichment), AI agents (Claygent and account research agents, an agent plugin available via CLI/API, and an MCP interface for sales reps), orchestration (workflows, functions, AI formatting), and execution (CRM enrichment, a native sequencer, and syncing of targeted ad audiences to LinkedIn, Meta and Google). Clay itself does not send email campaigns; enriched, verified records are pushed into engagement tools such as Instantly or Smartlead and into CRMs. Company-level filters include industry, size, entity type, location and LinkedIn following, while person-level filters include title, seniority, department, experience, location and profile keywords.

Common use cases marketed by the company include CRM enrichment, TAM sourcing, territory planning, reverse ETL, outbound and automated inbound pipeline generation, product-led growth assist, account-based marketing, rep prospecting and account research, aimed at GTM operations, marketing, sales, enterprise and startup teams.

Founding story

Founders Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan met as students at McGill University; Amin, originally from Egypt, moved to Canada for university and then to the United States, first to Seattle to work at Microsoft and later to New York, where the pair built and sold Frame to Sailthru in 2012 before starting Clay in 2017. Amin has said New York and San Francisco were the best places to fundraise, which shaped the decision to build in the US rather than Canada.

Business model

Clay sells access to its data and workflow platform on a subscription basis with a free trial and self-serve signup alongside a sales-led demo motion; usage of external data providers is consumed through credits, and the platform is positioned as consolidating the cost of multiple point tools.

Software subscription with credit-based consumption for data enrichment; the company told The New York Times it expected to end 2025 with roughly $100 million in revenue, about triple the prior year.

Traction

Clay reported more than 10,000 customers in mid-2025, up from 5,000 in January 2025 and 2,500 with 100,000 users at the time of its Series B; its site cites more than 500,000 GTM teams. The company said it was on track to more than triple revenue in 2025, having grown revenue 10x in each of the two years preceding the Series B, and had grown from fewer than 10 employees at launch to more than 50 by mid-2024. Published customer outcomes include Intercom growing outbound-sourced pipeline 140%.

Latest developments

In August 2025 Clay confirmed a $100 million Series C led by CapitalG at a $3.1 billion valuation, following a Sequoia-led tender offer of about $1.5 billion announced weeks earlier that let most employees sell shares; The New York Times subsequently reported an employee share sale at a $5 billion valuation. Proceeds are earmarked for product development. Recent product additions include agent plugins accessible via CLI/API, an MCP integration for reps, account research agents, and an ads audience sync.