AI sales startup Actively AI has raised $22.5 million to build the first “GTM superintelligence” — a platform that goes beyond automation and assistance by applying advanced reasoning to drive smarter, more strategic decisions, according to the company on Wednesday. The total capital raised includes $17.5 million in Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures, following a previously unannounced $5 million seed round from First Round Capital.
While AI sales startups are a crowded market these days, Actively AI argues that it has a different approach. Co-founder Anshul Gupta argues the early versions of some AI sales tools don’t live up to their own hype. He claims that classic AI sales reps aren’t the right approach, and that they’ve “failed” by focusing too much “pure volume” — that means contacting as many potential customers as possible.
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Actively, which was founded in 2022, attempts a different approach. The startup builds custom “reasoning” models for companies to sift through their data and find the highest-value prospects to sell to, mirroring the work that top human sales reps do.
Actively claims these methods are working, and that it has helped clients like fintech Ramp get tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue. “We call it ‘GTM Superintelligence’ — a reasoning-driven approach that doesn’t just automate or assist, but actively makes the best possible decisions to drive growth,” co-founder and CEO Mihir Garimella said.
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The startup reportedly makes use of proprietary models alongside those from OpenAI and Anthropic to enhance its technology. Both founders previously studied AI at Stanford, with Garimella focusing on a field closely related to reasoning called active learning, giving Actively its name.
Actively’s successful fundraising indicates that the AI boom could be spreading beyond foundational AI companies like OpenAI or DeepSeek to startups. However, it is still too early to determine if Actively’s reasoning-powered approach will work as advertised, or if this will become just a new spin on AI sales tools.