Zero Raises $10.3M to Challenge Salesforce, HubSpot

Backed by the founders of Lovable and Langdock, the Finnish startup says its AI can replace the entire CRM stack.

The founders of European AI startups Lovable and Langdock are among the backers of a Finnish startup challenging customer relationship management giants Salesforce and HubSpot.

Zero has secured a $10.3 million seed round led by New York-based Primary Venture Partners, with participation from Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, and founders of Lovable, Supercell, Langdock and Silo AI. The company said the round is one of the biggest seed rounds ever raised by a Finnish tech company.

Zero’s earlier backers include Harry Stebbings’ 20VC, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins, and operator funds backed by executives from Spotify, Wolt, Shopify, Dropbox, Meta and OpenAI.

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Zero is positioning itself as a 2026-era challenger to Salesforce and HubSpot, arguing that the existing CRM model is finished. Its AI technology, the company says, replaces both the CRM and the wide assortment of tools teams use for prospecting, customer success and broader revenue operations with a single system that works on its own.

Zero’s AI agents build prospect lists, send outbound emails and monitor customer relationships after onboarding, reducing manual work across the customer lifecycle, according to the company.

Zero was founded by Tuomo Riekki, who co-founded the Finland-founded AI advertising platform Smartly, and Santtu Koivumäki, who led Smartly’s go-to-market efforts across five markets. The pair helped scale Smartly to $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

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“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. That model is finished,” Koivumäki said.

“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.”