Artisan

Artisan, founded in 2023 and based in San Francisco, builds what it terms AI employees - software agents designed to take over repetitive work. Its first product, Ava, is an AI BDR (Business Development Representative) that automates outbound sales tasks. The company's platform consolidates five tools typically bought separately - CRM, inbox, dialer, lead database and campaign engine - into a single system powered by AI collaborators, and manages hundreds of millions of leads. Artisan has raised over $35m from investors including Y Combinator, Sequoia, BOND, HubSpot Ventures and Soma Capital.

The company employs more than 30 people, with team members drawn from Meta, IBM and BCG. Its stated working principle is that humans and AI operate alongside one another as partners, freeing staff from manual tasks to concentrate on more substantive work. Beyond sales, Artisan says it is expanding its AI employees across other business functions.

Technical work at the company spans AI agents, autonomous AI orchestration, large language models, sales automation and outbound sales automation, as well as platform consolidation. The company sells into B2B SaaS, outbound sales and business development teams. The website is https://artisan.co/.