# Artisan

**Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/artisan  
**Vertical:** Marketing  
**Subcategory:** Sales Tools  
**Tier:** Emerging  
**Website:** artisan.co  
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14

## Summary

SF YC W24 AI Artisans workforce automation at $5M ARR serving 120+ companies; $46M total ($25M Glade Brook/HubSpot Series A Apr 2025 + $11.5M seed) with Ava AI BDR competing with 11x for autonomous business development AI employees.

## Company Overview

Artisan is a San Francisco-based AI workforce automation platform — backed by Y Combinator (W24) with $46 million in total funding including a $25 million Series A in April 2025 led by Glade Brook Capital with HubSpot Ventures, Y Combinator, and prior investors, following a $11.5 million seed in September 2024 — providing businesses with AI Artisans (specialized AI agents) that automate business development workflows, starting with Ava, an AI BDR that prospects, researches, and outreaches autonomously. Founded in 2023 by Jaspar Carmichael-Jack and Sam Stallings, Artisan achieved $5 million in annual recurring revenue serving 120+ companies with a 25-person team, ranking #39 on LinkedIn's Top Startups 2025 list.

Artisan's AI workforce model positions AI Artisans as digital employees that handle full end-to-end business workflows rather than single-task automation: Ava (the AI BDR) identifies target accounts, researches decision-makers, crafts personalized outreach sequences, manages email and LinkedIn touchpoints, handles responses, and books meetings — performing the complete business development workflow that a human SDR would execute. The full-workflow approach (versus point solutions for email generation or contact enrichment) represents the architectural differentiation from tools like Apollo.io or Outreach: rather than automating individual steps in a human-managed process, Artisan's Artisans own the entire workflow from prospecting through meeting booking. CTO Ming Li (formerly at Deel, Rippling, and TikTok) brings the engineering discipline for the scalable AI workforce platform that Artisan's $0 to $1.5M ARR in 8 months demonstrated product-market fit on.

In 2025, Artisan competes in the AI SDR, AI workforce automation, and sales development market with 11x (AI SDR, $24M raised), Piper (AI sales development, $10M raised), and Outreach (NASDAQ-track sales engagement, $489M raised at $4.4B valuation) for B2B company AI-powered business development and sales automation adoption. Glade Brook Capital's Series A leadership (Glade Brook has invested in Stripe, Figma, and Discord at growth stage) reflects conviction in Artisan's AI workforce platform potential. HubSpot Ventures' participation provides direct distribution access to HubSpot's 200,000+ CRM customer base as a deployment channel for Ava. The 2025 strategy focuses on expanding the AI Artisan product line beyond Ava (to customer success, marketing, and finance workflow automation), building the multi-Artisan orchestration for cross-functional business process automation, and growing the enterprise segment where AI workforce deployment has the highest ROI.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is Artisan?
Artisan is an AI employees company founded in 2023 that builds specialized AI agents called Artisans for business automation. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company was founded by Jaspar Carmichael-Jack and Sam Stallings and is part of Y Combinator's W24 batch.

### What products and services does Artisan offer?
Artisan offers AI employees called Artisans that automate business development workflows. Their flagship product is Ava, an AI BDR (Business Development Representative) launched in February 2023.

### Who is Artisan for?
Artisan targets businesses and sales teams looking to automate their business development processes through AI workforce solutions. The company currently serves over 120 companies.

### When was Artisan founded?
Artisan was founded in 2023 by Jaspar Carmichael-Jack and Sam Stallings.

### Where is Artisan located?
Artisan is based in San Francisco, California, United States.

### How much funding has Artisan raised?
Artisan has raised $46M total across three rounds: $2.3M pre-seed in 2023, $11.5M seed round in September 2024 led by Oliver Jung, and $25M Series A in April 2025 with participation from Y Combinator and HubSpot Ventures.

### What are Artisan's key achievements and metrics?
Artisan has achieved $5M in annual recurring revenue, serves over 120 companies, and scaled from $0 to $1.5M ARR in just 8 months. The company currently has 25 employees.

### What technology approach does Artisan use?
Artisan builds specialized AI agents called Artisans that function as AI employees to automate business workflows, specifically focusing on business development and sales processes.

### Who are the key people at Artisan?
Artisan was founded by Jaspar Carmichael-Jack and Sam Stallings in 2023. Ming Li joined as CTO in 2025, bringing experience from Deel, Rippling, and TikTok.

### What are Artisan's recent developments?
Artisan recently closed a $25M Series A round in April 2025 led by Y Combinator and HubSpot Ventures. The company appointed Ming Li as CTO in 2025 and has reached $5M in annual recurring revenue serving over 120 companies.

## Tags

b2b, marketing, martech, saas, startup

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*Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*