Clay

Clay sells software that go-to-market teams use to find, enrich and act on data about companies and people. Its platform pulls from more than 200 data providers, layers AI research agents on top, and pushes results into CRMs, ad platforms and outreach tools. Customers use it for CRM enrichment, account research, outbound campaigns and territory planning. The company was founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin, now chief executive, and Nicolae Rusan, with Varun Anand joining as a co-founder in 2021. It began as a no-code spreadsheet product before finding its market with sales and growth teams, and is based in New York.

Clay's early rounds were disclosed together in June 2024: pre-seed funding from BoxGroup, a $2.5 million seed led by First Round Capital, and a $13.5 million Series A led by Sequoia Capital. In the same announcement Clay said it had raised a $46 million Series B led by Meritech Capital at a $500 million valuation, with Sequoia, First Round, BoxGroup and Boldstart participating. In January 2025 existing investors led by Meritech added a $40 million Series B expansion at a $1.25 billion valuation. In May 2025 Sequoia led an employee tender offer at $1.5 billion. In August 2025 CapitalG led a $100 million Series C at a $3.1 billion valuation. In January 2026 DST Global led a second tender, of up to $55 million, at $5 billion. On September 9, 2026 Wellington Management led a $115 million Series D at a $7.1 billion valuation, with Sequoia, StepStone, a16z perennial, Meritech, DST, CapitalG, BoxGroup, Boldstart, Bloomberg Beta and Evolution participating.

Clay crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in December 2025, two years after reaching $1 million. It says revenue grew tenfold in both 2022 and 2023, sixfold in 2024 and about fourfold in 2025, and that enterprise net revenue retention exceeds 200%. It reports more than 17,000 customers, including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Stripe and Visa, up from about 5,000 in January 2025. In January 2025 it made its first acquisition, Avenue, an intent-signal product.

For investors, Clay shows how much value can build up after a slow start. It spent roughly six years finding its product, then raised at $500 million, $1.25 billion, $3.1 billion and $7.1 billion within about 27 months. BoxGroup and First Round entered at pre-seed and seed and Sequoia at the Series A, all before that growth. Two employee tender offers in nine months gave staff some liquidity while the company stayed private. Total announced primary funding comes to about $317 million.