Zero Secures 100 Million SEK for AI-Driven Sales System

Zero has raised over 100 million SEK to develop a sales system designed to eliminate the need for sellers to manually enter customer data.

Breakit reported that the seed round totaled 10.3 million dollars and was led by Primary Venture Partners. Other co-investors in the round include Greens, Defiant, and Inception Fund. According to the company, this represents one of the largest seed rounds ever raised by a Finnish technology firm.

Several high-profile business angels participated in the funding. These include Fabian Hedin, a co-founder of Lovable, and Ilkka Paananen, the chief executive officer of Supercell. Other investors include Gabriel Petersson, a researcher at OpenAI and co-founder of Depict, as well as Peter Sarlin, the founder of Silo AI, and the founders of Langdock. The company's ownership already included PostHog founder James Hawkins and 20VC.

Founded in 2024, Zero previously raised 2.7 million dollars in a pre-seed round led by 20VC in December of that year. The company was started by Santtu Koivumäki and Tuomo Riekki. Riekki previously co-founded Smartly.io in 2013 and served as its product chief until Providence Equity acquired a majority stake in 2019 for approximately 200 million euros. Koivumäki managed the sales and launch of Smartly across five markets. Zero states that the pair scaled Smartly to over 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue.

The platform utilizes artificial intelligence agents to handle tasks typically required by traditional customer relationship management systems, such as recording meetings, calls, and emails. The system consists of four modules: Prospect for pipeline building, Close as a customer registry replacement, Grow for upselling to existing clients, and Scale for process automation. Zero claims that its customer Watchdog reduced its sales cycle from 60 to 30 days, while Teamspective doubled its new sales.

Zero faces competition from major American firms such as HubSpot and Salesforce. The company offers a launch price of 60 dollars per seat without a startup fee, contrasting with HubSpot's Professional level, which Zero notes costs between 90 and 100 dollars per seat monthly plus a 1,500 dollar startup fee.

Reported by Dagens PS.