Clay raises $115M at $7.1B valuation after decade-long grind to $100M ARR
alex_teichman · x · 2026-09-12
GTM automation company Clay raised a $115M Series D at a $7.1B valuation, now serving 17,000+ teams including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Stripe, and Visa — 80% of the Forbes AI 50.
The tweet retells the long arc behind the "overnight success":
- Founded 2017 to make programming accessible: first a modern terminal, then a spreadsheet pulling data from the web
- Used for recruiting, sales, accounting, engineering — yet revenue stayed near $0 by spring 2022
- The founder admitted they "had a customer, but it was the wrong customer," so Clay stopped serving every team and went all-in on GTM
- Getting from 0 to 1 took nearly six years; ARR then went from $1M to $100M in about two years
Clay positions itself as a self-learning revenue engine: best-in-class company data first, then campaign infrastructure across email, ads, and landing pages, now agents that learn from every campaign.
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