Clarify Wants to be Salesforce, but Better

For decades, customer relationship management (CRM) systems promised to streamline sales (but often delivered the opposite: administrative overload.) In 2024, software veterans Patrick Thompson , Austin Hay , and Ondrej Hrebicek set out to change that with Clarify, an AI-native, autonomous CRM built to eliminate busywork and free sales teams to focus on closing deals. This week, Clarify announced it had raised $22.5 million in funding from investors including USVP, Gradient, and Madrona Ventures. The company also made its product generally available, marking its official move from stealth pilot to market challenger. Thompson, formerly a co-founder at Iteratively and product leader at Amplitude, partnered again with Iteratively’s former CTO, Hrebicek, who also led engineering at Amplitude. Hay, Clarify’s COO, previously ran marketing tech at Ramp and held product roles at Runway and mParticle. Their collective background spans data infrastructure, analytics, and growth operations, key areas for building a product designed to unify sales processes. A Rebuild, Not an Add-On Clarify’s premise is that legacy CRMs: Salesforce, HubSpot, and the like, are architected to be managed, not to manage. “These systems demand an army of humans just to produce basic outcomes,” CEO Patrick Thompson said in the launch announcement. “We are building a CRM that acts like your best teammate.” Clarify’s product is AI-native. Rather than bolting AI onto old software, Clarify rebuilt the CRM from the ground up using what it calls “Ambient Intelligence”: an always-on, context-aware system that captures data from meetings, emails, and calls, creates and updates pipeline records, and proactively surfaces next steps. That design eliminates the need for plugins, manual entries, or parallel tools. Clarify claims that 70% of its users return to the platform weekly, a high engagement rate in a still underutilized software category. Still Room for Growth in the Market Salesforce, which pioneered the software-as-a-service CRM model in 1999, now generates over $34.8 billion in annual revenue. HubSpot brings in $2.6 billion. But most of that growth has come from large enterprises. The vast remainder, millions of SMBs and high-growth companies, have either never implemented CRM or have since abandoned it due to poor usability and overhead. Clarify is aiming squarely at that opportunity. By removing the complexity of setup and eliminating the need for manual upkeep, it presents itself as a "no-brainer" CRM for teams still managing sales through spreadsheets or point solutions. As Austin Hay puts it, “You hire a sales rep to sell, not to input data.” The Shift to AI-Native Platforms Clarify enters a market in flux. While incumbents like Salesforce are investing heavily in AI, its Agentforce platform now powers autonomous agents across service and sales, those efforts are layered on decades-old architecture. That presents challenges in real-time data access, latency, and flexibility. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been vocal about the company’s AI vision, pushing for a billion AI agents in a year, but has also acknowledged concerns about legacy systems and observability. Meanwhile, companies like Klarna are going further: eliminating major SaaS platforms, including Salesforce, in favor of custom-built internal tools powered by AI. Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, cited data fragmentation and system sprawl as key reasons for the shift. While he stopped short of declaring the end of Salesforce, his move makes clear that businesses want simpler, more connected, and more autonomous software. Clarify’s approach aligns with that demand. Instead of requiring reps to toggle between CRMs, call recorders, meeting note apps, and tools, Clarify bundles those functions into a single platform. Its system captures conversations and automates task follow-ups, without user input. That kind of end-to-end automation is what differentiates an AI-native system from an AI-enhanced one. Can Clarify Scale? Clarify’s next challenge is scale: product, customers, and operations. The company has started by targeting high-growth teams, from startups adopting their first CRM to midmarket companies replacing legacy stacks. Its pricing model and lightweight architecture make it attractive for fast-moving teams, but competing at the enterprise level will require deeper integrations, stronger compliance frameworks, and a broader set of features. At the same time, the market for next-gen CRMs is heating up. Startups like Attio, Day.ai, and Rox are all innovating in different slices of the sales stack. Salesforce, for its part, is not standing still. Its Agentforce platform, which now supports real-time streaming and industry-specific actions, continues to be adopted across sectors like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. Still, Clarify’s traction in under a year and before general release (hundreds of active teams, 70% weekly engagement, and growing investor confid

Clarify Wants to be Salesforce, but Better

A Rebuild, Not an Add-On

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