Clay secures $115 million at $7.1 billion valuation

New York-based software company Clay has raised $115 million in a Series D funding round led by Wellington Management, lifting its valuation to $7.1 billion as demand grows for artificial intelligence tools used by sales and marketing teams.

The financing, announced on September 9, included participation from Sequoia Capital, StepStone Group, Andreessen Horowitz’s Perennial fund, Meritech Capital, DST Global, CapitalG, BoxGroup, Boldstart, Bloomberg Beta and Evolution. Clay said the new capital would support development of its AI-driven platform and efforts to expand among larger corporate customers.

Clay is co-founded and led by Kareem Amin, an entrepreneur originally from Egypt who serves as chief executive. The company was established in 2017 in New York, initially building flexible workflow and data tools before focusing on software that helps revenue teams research prospects, combine information from multiple sources and automate personalised outreach.

The new round values Clay $2.1 billion above the level attached to an employee tender offer at the start of 2026 and more than twice the valuation from its previous primary financing round in 2025. Wellington’s involvement also brings into the shareholder base an asset manager known for backing private technology companies approaching later stages of growth.

Clay said it now serves more than 17,000 customers and that its revenue expanded fourfold during 2025. The company expects annual recurring revenue to reach about $200 million during the current quarter, while management has indicated that the figure could rise to roughly $240 million by the end of its fiscal year.

Amin said Clay’s aim was to become the infrastructure companies use to build and automate growth systems as artificial intelligence changes how sales teams identify and engage customers. The platform combines business data, workflow automation and AI agents that can research companies, enrich contact information and trigger tailored actions without requiring users to build conventional software.

The company has gained traction among technology groups and large enterprises seeking to automate labour-intensive sales operations. Clay says its customers include Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Stripe, ElevenLabs, Workday and Siemens. It also says 80 per cent of companies on Forbes’ AI 50 list use its products.

Some customers are deploying the software for highly specific tasks. Anthropic uses Clay to automate research connected with self-service sign-ups, while Google Cloud has used the platform to support outbound sales activity. DoorDash is testing an agent designed to identify companies that could become prospects for its workplace lunch programme.

The funding comes as venture investors continue to put large sums into software businesses positioned to benefit from enterprise spending on generative AI. Clay differs from companies building foundation models or computing infrastructure, concentrating instead on applying AI to go-to-market operations, where businesses are seeking measurable productivity gains from automation.

Wellington technology investor Rob Mazzoni said the firm had followed Clay for several years before deciding to invest, describing the opportunity as extending beyond traditional sales software. Wellington typically invests in private companies at a stage when they may be several years from a public listing.

Clay has not announced plans for an initial public offering. Amin has said the company is being managed with the financial discipline and operating systems expected of a business that could eventually enter public markets, while remaining focused on product expansion and customer growth.

Management has emphasised capital efficiency. Amin said Clay had briefly reached profitability this year while continuing to invest in growth, and Anand said annualised revenue could double next year. The company is targeting Fortune 500 customers, a shift from its earlier concentration on smaller technology teams, as it seeks to turn specialised AI-assisted workflows into broader enterprise revenue infrastructure.

The company has also sought to popularise the role of the “go-to-market engineer”, a job combining technical skills with sales and marketing operations. Alongside the financing, Clay announced a $1 million scholarship fund intended to train people for that type of work.

Amin studied electrical engineering at McGill University and previously worked at Microsoft before moving into entrepreneurship and product management. He co-founded Clay with Nicolae Rusan, while Varun Anand joined the company in 2021 and later became a co-founder and head of operations.