A Finnish startup aiming to disrupt the customer relationship management space has raised $10.3m in its seed round, marking one of the largest early-stage funding rounds ever achieved by a company from the Nordic nation.

Zero has attracted backing from New York-based Primary Venture Partners as lead investor, alongside Inception Fund, Defiant, and Greens. The round also drew participation from founders of prominent European ventures including Lovable, Langdock, Supercell and Silo AI.

The startup's earlier supporters already included Harry Stebbings' 20VC fund, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins, and operator-focused funds led by former executives from Spotify, Wolt, Shopify, Dropbox, Meta and OpenAI.

Rethinking the CRM category

Zero is positioning itself as a next-generation alternative to established CRM platforms, arguing that the traditional model has become obsolete. The company's approach centres on artificial intelligence that consolidates customer relationship management with the various auxiliary tools teams typically deploy for lead generation, customer support and revenue management into a unified platform capable of autonomous operation.

The platform deploys AI agents to construct prospect databases, manage outbound communication campaigns, and maintain oversight of customer interactions following the initial onboarding phase, thereby minimising repetitive administrative tasks throughout the customer engagement cycle.

The founding team

Zero was established by Tuomo Riekki and Santtu Koivumäki, both veterans of Smartly, the Finnish artificial intelligence-powered advertising company. Riekki served as co-founder of Smartly, while Koivumäki oversaw the company's market entry strategy across five distinct regions. Together, they contributed to Smartly's expansion to $100m in annual recurring revenue.

Koivumäki reflected on the motivation behind Zero, stating: "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.

He continued: "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."

Source: Tech.eu