Clay funding, valuation and investors

Overview

Clay (clay.com; Clay Labs) is a New York AI go-to-market company founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan; Varun Anand joined as co-founder in 2021. It sells data, workflow, and agent tools for sales and marketing teams. On September 9, 2026 a Business Wire release and Reuters reported a $115 million Series D at a $7.1 billion valuation led by Wellington, with Sequoia, StepStone, Andreessen Horowitz, Perennial, Meritech, DST, CapitalG, BoxGroup, Boldstart, Bloomberg Beta, and Evolution participating. The Series D text did not disclose ARR. Clay’s January 2026 tender post said the company reached $100 million ARR in December 2025, was cash-flow positive for parts of 2025, and had 14,000 customers with enterprise NRR above 200% — treat those as January company claims, not Series D restatements. The January tender priced shares at $5 billion (DST-led; up to $55 million of employee sales) and is secondary, not additional primary. Prior disclosed primary: $100 million Series C at $3.1 billion (August 2025, CapitalG); $46 million Series B at $500 million (Meritech); $13.5 million Series A (Sequoia); seed/pre-seed from First Round and BoxGroup. Series C-era company total was $204 million. Wellington does not have a Venture Capital Tracker /fund/ page. This is clay.com, not a materials company.

Why Clay is interesting

September 9, 2026: $115 million Series D at $7.1 billion led by Wellington. That is 2.3× the August 2025 $3.1 billion Series C and 42% above the January 2026 $5 billion employee tender. The Series D announcement did not print current ARR. Clay’s January tender post said $100 million ARR in December 2025 and 14,000 customers; September claimed 17,000+ customers.

Product & use cases

AI go-to-market platform that combines third-party and first-party data, workflow automation, and agents so revenue teams can find accounts, research them, and run outbound.

• B2B account identification and enrichment across many data sources
• GTM workflows and agents that draft outreach, presentations, and follow-ups
• Shared TAM context across sales, marketing, and RevOps

Key facts

• Sep 9, 2026: $115M Series D at $7.1B; Wellington lead (Business Wire / Reuters); no ARR in the announcement
• Last company ARR print: $100M in December 2025 (January 2026 tender post)
• Customers: 17,000+ (Sep wire) vs 14,000 (Jan tender)
• Jan 2026 DST-led employee tender at $5B (up to $55M employee sales) is secondary
• Prior: $100M Series C at $3.1B (Aug 2025, CapitalG). No /fund/wellington

Funding history (newest first)

Investors in our directory

Funds linked from Clay's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.

Competitive landscape

Edge: A $7.1 billion Series D on a GTM data-and-agent canvas whose last printed ARR stock is December 2025 — diligence is the missing 2026 revenue print, not whether Clay has customers.

Clay’s September 2026 print ($115M at $7.1B, no current ARR) sits next to other AI-GTM marks only if you ignore the stale denominator. Compare it to 11x as a worker product, not as a like-for-like round.

• 11x adjacent

  a16z-backed digital workers (Alice/Jordan) sold as outcome-priced SDRs. See /startup/11x. Different product: workers vs Clay’s data/workflow canvas.

• Apollo / Outreach / ZoomInfo incumbent

  Data and sales-engagement suites. Clay is pitching agents on top of a unified GTM context layer rather than a classic sequencer seat.

Industries

Related funding articles

Venture Capital Tracker pieces that cover Clay's financing or category context.

• Clay’s $115M Series D Is $7.1B — ARR Last Printed at $100M in December
• September 9–10 VC News: Harvey $15.5B, Clay $7.1B, Covenant $250M Lifetime
• September 2026 VC News: Harvey $15.5B, Mistral €3B, Hugging Face $12.93B