Clay

What is Clay?

Clay is a go-to-market data platform that combines "waterfall" data enrichment, an AI research agent called Claygent, and outbound tooling in one spreadsheet-like workspace. Revenue teams use it to source target accounts, enrich contacts across 200+ data providers in a single subscription, mine the web for intent signals, and draft personalised messages at scale. Claygent is the AI piece: an agent that visits company sites, LinkedIn profiles and news to extract custom data points no single provider covers. It’s popular with GTM engineers as the orchestration layer between raw data and their outbound and CRM tools. Clay was founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan, with Varun Anand joining as co-founder in 2021; it is headquartered in New York. The company raised a $100M Series C led by CapitalG (Alphabet’s growth fund) in August 2025 at a $3.1B valuation, crossed $100M in annual recurring revenue in December 2025, and priced a follow-on employee tender offer led by DST Global at a $5B valuation in January 2026.

What does Clay do?

You work in tables that look like a spreadsheet, but each column can run an enrichment, an API call, or an AI prompt. "Waterfall" enrichment queries multiple data vendors in sequence until one returns a hit, which is why match rates beat any single provider. Claygent, the built-in AI agent, goes further: point it at a company website, careers page, LinkedIn profile or news and it extracts bespoke data points, a tech stack, a recent funding round, whether they’re hiring, that off-the-shelf providers don’t sell. You can then score and segment accounts, watch signals like job changes and web intent, write 1:1 personalised copy with AI, run email sequences through Clay’s Sequencer, sync audiences to LinkedIn/Meta/Google ads, and push clean data back into Salesforce or your warehouse. For builders there’s an HTTP API, a CLI and an agent plugin. Pricing is usage-based on two meters, "actions" for platform work and "data credits" for the vendor data you pull, and both scale with a slider inside each plan, so a workflow that’s cheap at 5,000 rows can cost far more at 50,000 once Claygent steps are involved. There’s a genuinely usable free plan; paid plans (Launch, Growth) and Enterprise buy more actions and credits. The main cost of that power is a real learning curve and unpredictable credit spend.

Key features

• Waterfall enrichment: Queries 200+ data providers in sequence until one returns a match, beating any single source on coverage.
• Claygent (AI research agent): An AI agent that scrapes company sites, LinkedIn and news to extract custom data points no provider packages.
• Signals + scoring: Track job changes, promotions and web intent, then score and segment accounts automatically.
• AI messaging + Sequencer: Generate 1:1 personalised copy and run email sequences natively.
• API, CLI + ad-audience sync: Push clean data to Salesforce, a warehouse, or LinkedIn/Meta/Google ad audiences.

What are Clay's use cases?

• Build a targeted prospect list: Source ICP accounts, waterfall-enrich the contacts, then have Claygent research each one before outreach.
• Enrich inbound automatically: Enrich and route inbound leads and keep CRM records clean via reverse ETL.

What does Clay integrate with?

• 200+ data providers (waterfall)
• Salesforce & HubSpot (CRM)
• LinkedIn / Meta / Google (ad audiences)
• Snowflake / warehouses (reverse ETL)
• HTTP API, CLI + agent plugin
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) — Clay runs its own MCP server so Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot and Glean can query a workspace directly

Why use Clay?

• Best-in-class waterfall enrichment, materially higher match rates than single-source tools.
• Claygent handles bespoke research that no data vendor packages.
• One workspace from raw data to enriched, personalised, CRM-ready outbound; unlimited seats on every plan.

Pros & cons

Clay pricing

• FreeFree
• Launch$167 / /month
• Growth$446 / /month
• EnterpriseCustom

See current pricing on clay.com ↗Compare Clay alternatives →

Clay review

Clay has become the GTM data layer serious outbound teams build on, and for good reason: its waterfall enrichment posts materially higher match rates than any single-source tool, and Claygent adds AI research that scrapes the web for data points no provider packages. Put together with signals, scoring, AI copy, a sequencer and ad-audience sync, it takes you from raw list to CRM-ready outbound in one workspace, with unlimited seats on every plan. The tradeoffs are equally well documented: the dual credit meter is genuinely hard to predict, failed lookups still cost credits and Claygent-heavy runs can balloon at scale, and the tool has a steep enough learning curve that it really wants a dedicated GTM engineer. Pick Clay if you have the technical appetite and a budget above a few hundred dollars a month; skip it if you need predictable flat pricing or have no one to build the workflows.

The GTM data engine of choice, unmatched enrichment and a capable research agent, sold on a dual credit meter that rewards careful budgeting.

Frequently asked questions