Artisan, a notable graduate from the winter 2024 Y Combinator cohort and the company behind the controversial 'Stop Hiring Humans' marketing campaign, has announced a $25 million Series A funding round led by Glade Brook Capital. Additional participants include HubSpot Ventures, Oliver Jung, Day One Ventures, BOND, Soma Capital, and Sequoia Scout. Additionally, the startup enjoys the continued support of Y Combinator.

Autonomous AI workers, not just assistants

Unlike many AI tools that integrate into existing workflows, Artisan takes a fundamentally different approach: by creating autonomous AI employees designed to take over specific repetitive job functions slowing human employees down. Artisan's first offering, Ava, is an AI Business Development Representative (BDR) that handles the entire outbound sales process—from discovering and researching leads to writing personalized outreach messages and booking meetings.

"The modern workplace is broken. Across industries, talented people are bogged down by work that should no longer exist," said Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Artisan's founder. "We're rethinking work from the ground up."

Artisan has developed a proprietary framework for autonomy to measure its AI employees' progress. According to the startup, the first version of Ava it shipped worked at 'Level 1' in the framework because it required human oversight. The current version of Ava is capable of crafting and sending outreach without human input, which for the startup means it is at 'Level 2'.

The company is working toward a 'Level 3' Ava that will "manage multistep outbound strategies, adapt in real-time, and optimize for pipeline impact, entirely on her own." Artisan's final goal are AI employees with a performance surpassing human employees' on every hard or soft skill associated with a role.

Intent-driven sales approach and outcome-based pricing

With its platform, Artisan is pioneering what it calls "intent-driven" outbound sales, moving away from traditional approaches it describes as "spammy, random, and poorly timed." Artisan's platform includes features like:

  • Web Visitor ID: Identifies anonymous website visitors for timely outreach
  • Watchtower Campaigns: Monitors for buying signals like job postings or funding rounds
  • CRM Nurture: Revives cold leads with context-aware follow-ups

Along with this novel approach to outbound sales, Artisan is implementing a success-based pricing model through a partnership with Paid.ai. Under this model, customers only pay when the AI delivers outcomes such as conversations, meetings, and pipeline—aligning the company's incentives directly with customer success.

Expanding beyond sales

Although Artisan has been focused on outbound sales for some time, the startup plans to launch additional AI employees later this year:

  • Aaron: An inbound SDR Artisan that evaluates and routes incoming leads
  • Aria: A meeting assistant Artisan that manages meetings, schedules reminders, and handles post-call notes.

The company has also strengthened its leadership team by incorporating Ming Li as CTO, who previously served as VP of Technology at Deel and has experience at Rippling, TikTok, and Google.

With this funding round, Artisan is positioned to advance its vision of creating a new work paradigm where AI handles repetitive tasks while humans focus on uniquely human contributions.