Artisan has secured a $25 million Series A round led by Glade Brook Capital to expand its AI-driven sales platform. Known for its bold slogan “Stop hiring humans,” Artisan offers AI employees called "Artisans" to autonomously perform sales functions. Its flagship AI BDR, Ava, identifies leads, writes personalized outreach messages, and schedules meetings—powered by a multi-agent system that detects real-time buying signals. Artisan also unveiled plans for two new AI workers—Aaron (Inbound SDR) and Aria (Meeting Assistant)—and introduced success-based pricing via Paid.ai. With former executives from Deel, Rippling, and Google joining the team, Artisan is pushing toward a fully autonomous, end-to-end AI sales workforce.

Artisan, a rising star in the AI-powered workforce automation space, announced the close of its $25 million Series A funding round on April 9. The round was led by Glade Brook Capital, with participation from HubSpot Ventures, Sequoia Scout, Day One Ventures, Y Combinator, and other strategic investors.

Founded with the bold slogan “Stop hiring humans,” Artisan is not just disrupting the sales development landscape—it’s reshaping how companies build their revenue teams. The company’s AI workforce, known as Artisans, are designed to fully replace repetitive sales roles, beginning with outbound business development.

At the heart of its offering is Ava, an AI Business Development Representative (BDR), capable of autonomously discovering leads, analyzing intent signals, crafting personalized messages, and booking meetings across email and LinkedIn. Unlike many AI point solutions, Ava is powered by a multi-agent architecture and real-time context engine that identifies key buying signals—such as job postings, funding announcements, and leadership changes—to trigger timely outreach.

This latest funding will accelerate Artisan’s roadmap to build a fully autonomous sales workforce, including two upcoming AI agents:

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  Aaron – an inbound SDR designed to qualify and route leads from website and marketing sources.

  
  


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  Aria – a meeting assistant that handles scheduling, reminders, and follow-up summaries.

  
  

Artisan also announced a success-based pricing model in partnership with Paid.ai (founded by Outreach’s Manny Medina), ensuring clients only pay when AI agents generate real business outcomes, such as meetings or qualified pipeline.

“We believe AI employees should be held to the same standard as human ones: do the job well, or don’t do it at all,” said Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Artisan’s 23-year-old CEO and co-founder.

The company’s long-term vision includes developing Level 5 AI employees, capable of outperforming humans across both hard and soft skills in sales and beyond. Current clients, including SumUp, report consistent positive results from Ava, particularly in high-volume SMB outreach scenarios.

In a strategic move to support scale, Ming Li, former VP of Technology at Deel, joins as CTO. He is accompanied by a senior engineering team from Rippling, TikTok, and Google, aiming to accelerate Artisan’s AI infrastructure and autonomy efforts.

Implications for HR and Workforce Strategy

Artisan’s approach signals a fundamental shift in workforce design. Rather than supplementing human teams, the company envisions AI as full-time digital colleagues, measured by business performance, not headcount. For HR leaders and CHROs, this raises new questions around:

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  How do you structure hybrid human+AI teams?

  
  


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  What does performance management look like when digital agents are delivering pipeline?

  
  


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  How will workforce planning evolve when talent includes scalable software agents?

  
  

As companies continue to optimize for productivity and cost-efficiency, agentic AI platforms like Artisan could become standard across go-to-market teams. For HR technology stakeholders, the message is clear: AI isn’t just a tool. It’s a teammate.

About Artisan
Founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator, Artisan builds autonomous AI workers—beginning with sales roles—to replace repetitive work and help companies scale faster, without scaling headcount.