> log #10 — Clay, Sculptor & GTM agents

Everything is different now—again. Clay’s new AI agent makes a once-complicated power tool into a force multiplier for anyone in sales and marketing.

Sep 20, 2025

Clay has quietly become the AI tool in GTM circles. It started out complicated—powerful but fiddly—creating a cottage industry of Clay “experts” who sold their services to teams that couldn’t figure it out. Now, with the launch of its AI agent, that complexity melts away. For non-technical users, Clay’s cheat code is unlocked.

Clay’s Origin Story

Clay started in 2017 as a power-user’s dream: part spreadsheet, part enrichment hub, part workflow automation. It was the place GTM operators went to hack together lists, formulas, and enrichment workflows.

Its growth wasn’t traditional. Clay leaned into community-first motions: templates, Slack groups, Twitter playbooks. Ops leaders taught each other tricks. Agencies baked Clay into their services. That organic loop gave Clay outsized reach and stickiness.

The company raised steadily, hitting a $1.25B valuation in early 2025 after a Series B expansion ($40M), then jumping to $3.1B with a $100M Series C in August 2025 led by CapitalG and Sequoia. By then, Clay had grown from ~5,000 to 10,000+ customers in a matter of months, including names like OpenAI, Canva, and Rippling.

The SCULPT Launch: Clay’s AI Shift

At their first annual SCULPT conference, Clay announced three features that redefine its role:

Sculptor: AI GTM Co-Pilot

Natural language → complete workflow.
Example: “Find {job title} in {location} at {industry; company size; etc.} and validate their work emails.” Sculptor stitches together sourcing, enrichment, and filtering automatically.
Significance: Clay evolves from a builder’s tool into an AI operator. You state intent; the AI runs the play.

Audiences: Scale Without Limits

Removes the old 50K row cap. Now you can handle millions of records in one table.
Combine CRM data, intent signals, enrichment vendors, all in one place.
Significance: Clay becomes a central audience platform—your source of truth for targeting at enterprise scale.

Sequencer: Execution Inside Clay

Before: Build in Clay → export to Outreach, Apollo, or Woodpecker.
Now: Send campaigns directly inside Clay, with deliverability baked in.
Significance: Clay moves from data prep into campaign execution. Less tool sprawl, faster GTM motions.

How Agents Are Changing Workflows

Sculptor is more than a feature—it’s an agent. And agents change how we work:

Before agents: Tools were like machines. You had to know which buttons to push, in which order. Clay required formulas, enrichment steps, table joins. Many users leaned on ChatGPT to help write regex, design workflows, or troubleshoot steps.
With agents: You state intent, and the agent assembles the workflow invisibly. The mechanical work disappears.

This shifts the role of AI tools like ChatGPT:

Less about teaching you how to use Clay.
More about helping you decide what to do in Clay, interpreting the outputs, and turning them into strategy or narrative.

In other words, the agent eats execution. ChatGPT moves up into strategy, interpretation, and storytelling. That’s the real disruption: AI products are no longer “assistive layers” bolted on top. They’re becoming autonomous operators that reshape the workflows themselves.

Why This Matters for AI GTM

Clay’s evolution mirrors the broader direction of AI in GTM:

AI as Workflow Builder
Old model: software gave you features, you built the workflow.
New model: you declare intent, AI assembles the workflow invisibly.
Stack Consolidation
Yesterday: enrichment + orchestration + sequencing across multiple tools.
Tomorrow: AI-native platforms absorb the full stack.
Community → Platform
Early adopters shared hacks in Slack groups. Now those hacks are productized as AI features for everyone.
Enterprise Ready
Lifting scale limits, embedding execution, and layering AI makes Clay viable not just for scrappy ops teams, but for Fortune 500 GTM engines.

Why Clay’s Direction Matters & What It Means Broadly

Putting Clay’s history + this set of product launches + what other tools are doing together, here’s what seems like the big trend, and why Clay might be one of the earlier leaders in this wave:

Growth of the “GTM Engineer”/Ops-Builder Role
As tooling gets more powerful, there’s more value in people who can build workflows, define segmentation, tie together signals → outreach → measurement. Clay is investing in that role (they mention it explicitly) and productizing tools for non-technical users to get large leverage.
More End-to-End Platforms vs Best-of-Breed Stitching
Companies are tired of moving data between tools, suffering sync issues, delays, different UIs. Folks want tools that can cover the whole GTM journey: discovery → data → segmentation → outreach → measurement. Clay’s new updates (Audiences, Sequencer, Sculptor) are pushing in that direction. Other tools are being forced to follow or specialize.
AI Not Just Assistive, but Operative
The leap Clay makes with Sculptor (you declare intent, it builds workflow) is the difference between AI that helps you do things faster vs. AI that does the things (in a safe / controlled way). This is risker, but much more powerful for GTM velocity and scale.
Investment & Valuation Reflecting Confidence in New GTM Models
The fact that Clay doubled its valuation (from ~$1.25B to ~$3.1B) in a short time, with fresh funding, shows investors believe demand is real: companies want AI-driven GTM, not just CRM + automation. It’s validating the product direction.
Community + Ecosystem as Moats
Clay has built a large user base, community groups, agencies, templates, etc. That helps with distribution, feedback, feature innovation, and stickiness. As they offer more in-product AI/agents, they can productize patterns from their community. This is harder for new entrants to replicate quickly.

The Competitive Landscape

These aren’t identical to Clay, but they illuminate how the space is evolving, what features people are betting on, and what differentiators might matter for you.

The pattern is clear: AI platforms that unify intent → action are winning.

The Bigger Picture: Where AI Products Are Headed

Less about features, more about outcomes. You don’t care which enrichment vendor fires—you care about having the right list for your campaign.
AI as operator, not add-on. The AI doesn’t just speed up tasks; it runs them end-to-end.
From power-user cult to enterprise standard. Community drove early adoption; AI cements mainstream adoption.

Clay shows the direction: the GTM stack is being rebuilt around AI-native platforms. What used to be a “spreadsheet for growth hackers” is now a $3B operating system for go-to-market teams.

Takeaway for Marketers

The biggest mistake you can make right now is treating AI like a set of shortcuts inside the same old tools. That’s a 2023 mindset. What’s happening in 2025 is the stack itself is being rewritten around agents.

Clay’s SCULPT launch isn’t just another product update—it’s a flare shot into the sky showing where GTM is headed: workflows built by AI, executed by AI, at enterprise scale. The question for marketers isn’t whether to adopt AI, but whether you’re ready to rebuild your playbook for a world where the tools don’t just help you click faster—they run the entire motion for you.