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How Zero Plans to Replace the Traditional CRM Stack With AI Agents
Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round to build an AI native go to market system that automates prospecting, outreach, CRM updates and customer health monitoring. Primary Venture Partners led the round, joined by Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens and founders from companies including Lovable, Supercell, Langdock,...
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Key takeaways
- Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round to build an AI native go to market system that automates prospecting, outreach, CRM updates and customer health monitoring.
- Primary Venture Partners led the round, joined by Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens and founders from companies including Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI and Depict.
- The company was founded by Smartly veterans Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki, whose prior experience included helping scale Smartly to $100 million in ARR.
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: How is Finnish AI startup Zero—founded by former Smartly leaders Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki, who helped scale Smartly to $100 million. Article summary: Zero is building an AI-native go-to-market operating system rather than a conventional CRM: one shared customer record for prospecting, sales and post-sale work, with agents handling much of the administrative and resear. 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
Traditional CRM systems are often paired with separate tools for account research, prospecting, outbound work, customer success and revenue operations. Helsinki-based Zero is building around a different premise: AI agents, operating from a shared customer context, should handle much of that work in one go-to-market system. The company announced a $10.3 million seed round on September 15, 2026, led by Primary Venture Partners. 1
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Zero’s product thesis: replace the stack, not just add AI to CRM
Zero describes its product as an AI-based go-to-market operating system rather than another conventional CRM. Its stated aim is to replace traditional CRM software and the surrounding collection of sales, prospecting and customer-success tools. 1
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The proposed workflow spans the customer lifecycle:
- Prospecting: agents build prospect and target-account lists.
- Outbound work: agents support outbound outreach.
- Sales administration: agents update customer records and prepare follow-up work.
- Post-sale management: agents monitor customer health through renewal.
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The important distinction is architectural as much as functional. Rather than asking teams to move information among a CRM and several specialist products, Zero is positioning a shared customer record as the operating context for its agents across prospecting, sales and post-sale work. That is the basis for its claim that it can challenge the broader Salesforce- or HubSpot-centered stack—not merely compete as a point tool. 1
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Why the founders’ Smartly experience matters
Zero was founded by Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki. Riekki previously co-founded Smartly, while Koivumäki led Smartly’s go-to-market efforts across five markets; their prior company experience included helping scale Smartly to $100 million in annual recurring revenue. 5
That background does not establish that Zero will win against entrenched CRM vendors. But it is relevant to the product problem the company has chosen: building and selling software for commercial teams requires experience with the operational complexity Zero says it wants to remove.
The $10.3 million seed round
Zero’s $10.3 million seed round was led by New York-based Primary Venture Partners. Participants included Inception Fund, Defiant and Greens, along with founders associated with Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI and Depict. Named backers include Fabian Hedin, Ilkka Paananen and Peter Sarlin. 13
The round followed earlier backing from 20VC, which led Zero’s pre-seed, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins, and operator funds backed by executives from Spotify, Wolt, Shopify, Dropbox, Meta and OpenAI. 13
Zero says the financing is among the largest seed rounds raised by a Finnish technology company. 13 The more practical significance is that the company has attracted both a U.S. venture lead and operators with experience in European software and AI businesses—useful support for an early-stage company pursuing an international, category-level ambition.
What would have to be true for Zero to succeed
Zero’s challenge is broader than adding automation to sales workflows. To truly replace a CRM stack, it would need to become dependable enough for teams to centralize customer information and daily commercial processes in one place.
Its promise depends on several things working together:
- Accurate customer context. Agents need reliable records and timely signals if their prospecting, follow-ups and health monitoring are to be useful.
- Connected workflows. A unified system is valuable only if prospecting, sales and customer-success activity can operate from the same context rather than recreate another set of disconnected tools.
- Operational trust. Commercial teams must be comfortable relying on agent-supported processes for customer-facing and revenue-critical work.
- A credible migration path. Zero says it is open to everyone with a 14-day free trial and AI-assisted migration from existing tools, acknowledging that switching costs are central to the CRM market.
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The company’s funding and founder pedigree provide early validation of the opportunity, not confirmation that legacy CRM platforms will be displaced. The test is whether Zero can turn its agent-based workflow into a system companies trust for the full path from first prospect contact through renewal.
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What is the short answer to "How Zero Plans to Replace the Traditional CRM Stack With AI Agents"?
Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round to build an AI native go to market system that automates prospecting, outreach, CRM updates and customer health monitoring.
What are the key points to validate first?
Zero has raised a $10.3 million seed round to build an AI native go to market system that automates prospecting, outreach, CRM updates and customer health monitoring. Primary Venture Partners led the round, joined by Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens and founders from companies including Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI and Depict.
What should I do next in practice?
The company was founded by Smartly veterans Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki, whose prior experience included helping scale Smartly to $100 million in ARR.