Helsinki Startup Zero Raises $10.3M to Replace Your CRM Entirely

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-15

What if your CRM didn't just sit there waiting for you to update it? What if it actually did the work for you? That's the question Zero, a Helsinki-based startup, is answering with a fresh $10.3 million (€8.93 million) Seed round announced today. The company is building what it calls a GTM operating system—a mouthful, I know—but the idea is simple: a system that runs your go-to-market motions on autopilot, so your team can stop wrestling with tools and start talking to customers. The round was led by New York-based Primary Venture Partners, with participation from Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, and the founders of Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, and Silo AI. Zero's earlier backers include 20VC, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins, and operator funds backed by executives from Spotify, Wolt, Shopify, Dropbox, Meta, and OpenAI. In December 2024, the company raised $2.7 million (€2.34 million) in pre-Seed funding led by 20VC. ### The Problem with CRMs Today Let's be honest: traditional CRMs are where data goes to die. Sales reps spend hours updating records, customer success teams juggle multiple tools, and leadership still can't see what's happening. It's a mess. Zero aims to change that by replacing your CRM and the patchwork of prospecting, outreach, and customer health tools with a single system that works on its own. Its AI agents build prospect lists, send outbound emails, and monitor customer health after onboarding—reducing manual work across the entire customer lifecycle. "Knowledge work is becoming more autonomous, and we will wrestle with existing legacy systems for a long time," said Fabian Hedin, co-founder and CTO of Lovable and an angel investor in Zero. "Zero is building a GTM operating system that is autonomous by default. I'm excited to be backing a team with great craftsmanship and taste." ### How Zero Works Zero was founded in 2024 by Tuomo Riekki, who co-founded Helsinki-based Smartly.io, and Santtu Koivumäki, who led Smartly's go-to-market across five markets. Their vision? Make the CRM itself unnecessary. Here's how it works: - **Prospecting:** Agents build targeted lists and send personalized outbound emails. - **Sales:** Once a prospect engages, the system tracks interactions and surfaces insights. - **Customer Success:** After onboarding, agents monitor customer health and flag risks. - **Renewals:** The system helps teams grow accounts without missing a beat. "AI has made it much easier to build products. It hasn't made it easier to build a business around them," said Riekki. "Marketing, sales, and customer success teams still spend too much time switching between tools and keeping data up to date. We built Zero so a team can find, win, and support customers without the manual work growing alongside the business." ### Early Traction During the private beta, customers replaced their CRM and separate prospecting, outreach, and customer health tools with Zero. Teamspective, for example, reports closing twice as much new business since switching. "I've led sales, customer success, and revenue operations. Too much of the job was getting people to update records so leadership could see what was happening, instead of letting them spend that time with customers," said Koivumäki. "That model is finished. The next generation of companies will win and support more customers with smaller teams because the tools they use will finally do their share of the work. That's what we're building with Zero." ### What This Means for Startups For startups, the promise is huge: do more with less. Instead of hiring a large sales team, a single full-stack GTM person can manage the entire customer relationship—from first outreach to renewal—with agents handling the busywork. Zero opens to the public today. If you're tired of your CRM slowing you down, it might be worth a look. It's not just about replacing a tool; it's about rethinking how go-to-market teams operate in the AI era. And with backing from some of the biggest names in European tech, Zero is definitely one to watch.