Clay

Clay is a go-to-market data platform that gives sales and marketing teams access to 150+ data providers, AI research agents, and workflow automation in one place. Instead of subscribing to multiple data tools and stitching them together manually, teams run everything through Clay’s spreadsheet-like interface. Companies including Anthropic, Rippling, and Intercom use Clay to automate lead enrichment, prospect research, and outbound campaigns at a scale that manual processes cannot match.

How Clay works

Clay works like a spreadsheet where every row is a contact or company, and every column pulls live data or runs an AI action. Here is how the core pieces fit together:

• Data marketplace: Clay connects to 150+ external data providers, including Apollo, Clearbit, and People Data Labs, from a single subscription. You call them inside your table the same way you would write a formula.
• Waterfall enrichment: Waterfall enrichment is a strategy where Clay runs a data lookup against the first provider, and if no result comes back, it automatically tries the next one, and so on. This chains multiple sources sequentially to push email and phone coverage to 85 to 95 percent without paying for data you do not find.
• Claygents: Clay’s built-in AI research agents can visit websites, search LinkedIn, and browse public databases to find specific information about any company or person. You describe what you want to know, and the agent returns a structured answer in a new column.
• Intent signals: Clay monitors external signals like job changes, funding announcements, and website visits. When a trigger fires, Clay can automatically update a record, alert a rep, or launch an outreach sequence.
• Sculptor: Sculptor is Clay’s natural language interface. You describe the workflow you want to build, and Clay generates the table and columns for you, no manual setup required.
• Destinations: Once records are enriched, Clay pushes them to your CRM, email sequencer, LinkedIn ad audiences, or data warehouse. Sync runs on a schedule so your tools stay current without manual exports.

Pricing uses a credit system where each data lookup or AI action costs credits from your monthly allocation. This means you only pay for results you actually get rather than a flat seat fee for data you may never use.

What you can build with Clay

• Automated inbound lead enrichment: When a prospect fills out a form on your website, Clay automatically enriches their record with company size, tech stack, funding stage, and job title before routing it to the right sales rep. This removes hours of manual research per lead and ensures reps only call qualified prospects.
• Outbound prospecting campaigns: A sales team defines their ideal customer profile (ICP, meaning the company type and role most likely to buy), builds a list in Clay using 150+ filters, enriches every contact with verified emails and phone numbers using waterfall enrichment, and exports it directly to their sequencer tool.
• CRM data hygiene automation: Clay pulls your CRM records on a schedule, re-enriches outdated fields like phone numbers, job titles, and LinkedIn URLs, and writes the cleaned data back. This keeps your CRM accurate without a dedicated operations role.
• Account-based marketing (ABM) audiences: Marketing teams build high-fit account lists in Clay, sync them to LinkedIn, Meta, and Google as ad audiences, and update those audiences automatically as company signals change, keeping ad targeting fresh without manual list management.
• Intent-based outreach triggers: Clay monitors a list of target accounts for signals like new funding rounds, executive hires, or product launches. When a signal fires, Clay enriches the new contact at that company and adds them to a personalised outreach sequence automatically.
• PLG trial scoring and routing: Product-led growth (PLG) teams pipe trial signups into Clay, score each one by company fit and product usage signals, and route high-fit accounts to sales while low-fit accounts continue through a self-serve flow.