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Clay

The AI-powered GTM platform that made 'GTM engineering' a job title — now near US$7B

Clay is the New York-based AI platform for sales and marketing teams — pulling prospect data from 150+ sources and running AI research agents and automated growth workflows — founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan (with Varun Anand joining as co-founder in 2021). It is the defining vendor of the 'GTM engineering' category it helped create, growing from US$500K ARR (2022) to ~US$100M ARR (December 2025) with 10,000+ customers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, Intercom and Rippling. Its funding path: BoxGroup pre-seed (2017), a US$2.5M First Round seed (2021), US$13.5M Series A led by Sequoia (2023), US$46M Series B at US$500M led by Meritech (June 2024), a US$40M Series B extension at US$1.25B (January 2025), employee tenders at US$1.5B (May 2025, Sequoia) and US$5B (January 2026, DST Global), and a US$100M Series C at US$3.1B led by CapitalG (August 2025). In August 2026 Axios reported Clay had inked a new round led by Wellington Management at a US$7B pre-money valuation — a deal not yet formally closed or publicly confirmed by the company as of 9 September 2026.

Clay logo
Founded
2017 (New York; product shipped Feb 2022)
Headquarters
New York, NY
Founders
Kareem Amin (CEO); Nicolae Rusan; Varun Anand (COO, joined 2021)
Sector
AI-powered go-to-market (GTM) platform — data, AI agents, workflow automation
Product
Claygent AI agents, Sculptor workflow builder, 150+ premium data sources, CRM enrichment
Customers
10,000+ (OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, Intercom, Rippling)
ARR
US$500K (2022) → ~US$100M (Dec 2025, reported)
Total raised
~US$204M primary equity across disclosed rounds
Latest valuation
US$7B pre-money (reported Wellington round, Aug 2026, not yet confirmed)
Valuation arc
US$500M (2024) → US$1.25B → US$1.5B → US$3.1B (2025) → US$5B (Jan 2026) → US$7B (reported)
Rounds recorded
9
Total raised
$277M
clay.com

Funding timeline

Every disclosed equity round for Clay, newest to oldest, with lead and participating investors where reported. Data is stored oldest-first; the timeline is displayed latest-first.

  1. Aug 31, 2026

    New round

    at $7B valuationLatest
    Led by Wellington Management

    Axios reported (31 August 2026) that Clay had inked a new round led by Wellington Management at a US$7B pre-money valuation. Round size undisclosed; as of 9 September 2026 neither Clay nor Wellington had formally confirmed the close — treat the figure as reported deal terms rather than a confirmed outcome.

    Source ↗

  2. Jan 28, 2026

    Employee tender

    $55Mat $5B valuation
    Led by DST Global

    Employee tender led by DST Global at a US$5B valuation, nearly double the Series C mark seven months earlier.

    Source ↗

  3. Aug 5, 2025

    Series C

    $100Mat $3.1B valuation
    Led by CapitalGMeritech CapitalSequoia CapitalFirst Round CapitalBoxGroupBoldstart VenturesSapphire Ventures

    Led by CapitalG (Alphabet's independent growth fund); Sapphire Ventures joined as a new investor. More than doubled the valuation from the January extension. Total funding reached US$204M.

    Source ↗

  4. May 1, 2025

    Employee tender

    $20Mat $1.5B valuation
    Led by Sequoia Capital

    Sequoia-led secondary tender allowing most employees to sell some shares.

    Source ↗

  5. Jan 1, 2025

    Series B extension

    $40Mat $1.25B valuation
    Led by Meritech Capital

    Pre-emptive extension led by Meritech Capital, lifting the price to US$1.25B seven months after the US$500M Series B.

    Source ↗

  6. Jun 1, 2024

    Series B

    $46Mat $500M valuation
    Led by Meritech CapitalSequoia CapitalFirst Round CapitalBoldstart Ventures

    Led by Meritech Capital as Clay entered its hypergrowth phase.

    Source ↗

  7. Jan 1, 2023

    Series A

    $13.5M
    Led by Sequoia Capital

    Led by Sequoia (Alfred Lin) as Clay began building the GTM-engineering category.

    Source ↗

  8. Jan 1, 2021

    Seed

    $2.5M
    Led by First Round CapitalBoxGroupBoldstart Ventures

    Led by First Round Capital.

    Source ↗

  9. Jun 1, 2017

    Pre-seed

    Led by BoxGroup

    Backing from NYC-based BoxGroup (David Tisch) at the company's founding.

    Source ↗

The story behind the numbers

Inventing the GTM-engineering category

Clay's founders (Amin and Rusan met at McGill studying electrical engineering, built and sold Frame, then took product roles at Dow Jones/WSJ) shipped Clay in February 2022 and effectively created two new categories: a 'claygency' services economy (160+ vetted partners) and the 'GTM Engineer' job title — 3,000+ open roles by January 2026 at a US$127K median salary. Customers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, Intercom and Rippling use it to run outbound on the highest-quality data foundation.

Revenue hypergrowth without touching the bank

Clay grew from US$500K ARR in 2022 to ~US$100M ARR by December 2025, with >200% NRR among enterprise accounts. After the August 2025 Series C, founder Amin told the press the company 'hasn't touched' the last round — the definitional capital-efficiency story of the AI GTM wave, and a reason Wellington's reported US$7B pre-money bet is on category ownership rather than current revenue.

A valuation arc with no product pivot

Clay's ladder — US$500M (mid-2024) → US$1.25B → US$1.5B → US$3.1B (2025) → US$5B (Jan 2026) → a reported US$7B (Aug 2026) — rerated roughly 14x in two years without any strategic pivot, pricing AI-powered sales/marketing tooling as one of the defining software categories of the current AI cycle. Wellington's reported involvement mirrors its large late-stage checks into AI-native software (e.g. Glean) rather than waiting for IPOs.

The caveat on the US$7B round

Unlike Harvey's September round, Clay's US$7B deal was still, as of 9 September 2026, an Axios-reported agreement in progress: round size and Wellington's stake undisclosed, and neither Clay nor Wellington had confirmed a close. Reported late-stage terms sometimes shift before finalizing, so the figure is carried here as reported rather than confirmed.

More in the Atlas

Clay's lead investors are profiled in the Investor Atlas when their firms join the directory. Track who backs every frontier AI round on the Funding Leaderboard.