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Zero Raises $10.3M to Replace Traditional CRM With AI Agents
Helsinki based Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners to build an AI native go to market system that aims to replace traditional CRM and separate sales tools; whether it can displac... The round includes Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, and founders of Lovable, Supercell, Langdock...
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- Helsinki based Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners to build an AI native go to market system that aims to replace traditional CRM and separate sales tools; whether it can displac...
- The round includes Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, and founders of Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI and Depict.
- Founded by Smartly veterans Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki, Zero is designed to let agents handle prospecting, record updates, follow ups and customer health monitoring while teams retain control of customer facing...
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: How has Finnish startup Zero raised a $10.3 million seed round—one of the largest seed rounds for a Finnish tech company—from Primary Ventur. Article summary: Zero has raised the $10.3 million seed through a syndicate led by Primary Venture Partners, combining specialist VC capital with credible operator-angels from European and U.S. technology companies. The round follows a 2. Topic tags: general, general web, user generated. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fa
Zero, a Helsinki-based software startup, has raised a $10.3 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners. The company is using the funding to pursue an unusually ambitious premise: rather than layering AI features onto a conventional CRM, build a system in which AI agents perform much of the prospecting, sales coordination and customer-success work that typically lives across several tools. 1
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The round is described by Zero as one of the largest seed financings for a Finnish technology company. That distinction is the company’s characterization, but the investor lineup and the size of the round underline the attention on AI-native revenue software. 13
Who backed Zero
Primary Venture Partners led the seed round. Other participants include Inception Fund, Defiant and Greens, alongside founders and operators associated with Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI and Depict. Zero has named Fabian Hedin, Ilkka Paananen and Peter Sarlin among the participating individuals. 13
The financing follows a $2.7 million pre-seed round led by 20VC in 2024, according to Zero. 15
For a young company challenging entrenched software categories, this mix matters beyond the money. A lead institutional investor can finance product development and hiring, while experienced founders and operators can bring practical insight into product distribution and scaling. Still, investment backing is not evidence that a product can win customers away from established CRM vendors.
The founders’ operating experience
Zero was founded in 2024 by Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki. Riekki previously co-founded Smartly, while Koivumäki led Smartly’s go-to-market expansion across five markets. Reporting on the round says their prior work helped Smartly scale to $100 million in annual recurring revenue. 3
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That background shapes Zero’s product thesis. The founders are targeting a familiar commercial problem: teams often maintain a CRM as the official system of record while using separate products for lead sourcing, enrichment, outreach, reporting and customer-success management. Each handoff can create duplicate data and more manual record maintenance.
Zero’s bet: CRM should do the work
Zero describes its product as an AI-native go-to-market operating system. Its central design principle is a shared customer record across prospecting, sales and post-sale work, rather than a collection of separate tools connected through integrations. 1
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The company says its agents can support work across the customer lifecycle, including:
- building prospect lists;
- conducting or preparing outbound outreach;
- updating customer records;
- handling follow-up and coordination tasks; and
- monitoring customer health and relationship signals.
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The intended outcome is a smaller commercial team that can find, close and retain customers without administrative effort increasing at the same rate as its customer base. Zero’s materials frame the system as a way to reduce manual data entry and tool switching, not simply a chatbot attached to a CRM. 15
Why Salesforce and HubSpot are the real benchmark
Zero is entering a market dominated by mature platforms and deeply embedded workflows. Its pitch is not merely that AI can help users operate Salesforce or HubSpot more efficiently. Instead, it aims to consolidate the CRM, lead database, enrichment, sequences, reporting and agent workflows into one product. 15
That is a harder proposition than automating a single sales task. It requires customers to trust the system with core relationship data and to change established processes. It also requires AI outputs—especially research, record updates and outreach—to be accurate, relevant and controllable.
Zero says beta users have replaced combinations of CRM, prospecting, outreach and customer-health products with its platform. This is a company claim rather than independently verified evidence of broad adoption or displacement of Salesforce and HubSpot. 13
What is available now
Zero says the product is open to all users, with a 14-day free trial and AI-assisted migration from existing tools. 13
The company’s $10.3 million seed gives it resources to test whether an agent-led system can become a credible system of record, rather than another point solution in an already crowded revenue-tech stack. Its key test will be operational: whether teams can gain automation without losing the data quality, governance and human judgment that customer relationships require.
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Helsinki based Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners to build an AI native go to market system that aims to replace traditional CRM and separate sales tools; whether it can displac...
What are the key points to validate first?
Helsinki based Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners to build an AI native go to market system that aims to replace traditional CRM and separate sales tools; whether it can displac... The round includes Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, and founders of Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI and Depict.
What should I do next in practice?
Founded by Smartly veterans Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki, Zero is designed to let agents handle prospecting, record updates, follow ups and customer health monitoring while teams retain control of customer facing...