Clado
AI-powered people search and enrichment for sales and recruiting
Website: https://clado.ai
Cover Block
| Name | Clado |
| Tagline | AI-powered people search and enrichment for sales and recruiting |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| Founded | 2025 |
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry | HR / Future of Work |
| Technology | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding Label | Seed (total disclosed ~$2,000,000) |
Links
- Website: https://clado.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomzhengy_today-we-launched-our-new-platform-clado-activity-7352154750315876354-dXEi
- Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/clado
The Short Version
Clado is an early-stage startup building an AI-powered platform for semantic people search and profile enrichment. Founded in 2025 by Eric Mao and Tom Zheng, the company emerged from Y Combinator and secured a $2 million seed round led by Valor Equity Partners with participation from Salesforce executive David Schmaier [The SaaS News]. Its core product, Atlas, uses language models to interpret custom criteria and match them against a database of hundreds of millions of profiles [Clado, company site] [LinkedIn]. Operating on a SaaS model targeting sales, recruiting, and business development teams, Clado's immediate challenge is to substantiate its data scale claims and demonstrate differentiated query understanding against established incumbents [Fondo] [Product Hunt].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Seed round and investor details are confirmed by a single trade publication; product claims and scale metrics are sourced from the company and third-party platforms but lack independent verification.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry / Vertical | HR / Future of Work |
| Technology Type | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding | Seed (total disclosed ~$2,000,000) |
The Company in Brief
Clado was founded in 2025 by Eric Mao and Tom Zheng, launching from a base in San Francisco with roots in Toronto's talent pool [BetaKit]. The company's public narrative positions it as a venture-scale startup from inception, focused on applying AI to the problem of finding and understanding people at a massive scale. Its earliest public milestone was participation in the Y Combinator accelerator program [Y Combinator].
The company's first significant external validation came with a $2 million seed round, structured using SAFE notes and led by Valor Equity Partners [The SaaS News]. The round included participation from Salesforce president and chief strategy officer David Schmaier [The SaaS News]. This capital supported the development and subsequent launch of the company's core product, Atlas, which was announced by co-founder Tom Zheng on LinkedIn in 2025 [LinkedIn].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Founding details and seed round confirmed by a single trade publication; accelerator participation and product launch corroborated by primary sources.
What They Have Built
Clado’s core product, Atlas, is positioned as a semantic search engine for people, designed to interpret intent-based queries rather than simple keyword matching. The platform’s stated purpose is to enable deep research and profile enrichment for teams in sales, recruiting, and business development [Clado, company site].
The technical foundation appears to rely on language models to parse user intent and retrieve matching profiles. A founder’s post notes Atlas uses “small language models” to interpret queries semantically before retrieving and enriching contact data [LinkedIn]. Enrichment features include appending verified email addresses, phone numbers, and links to professional profiles on platforms like GitHub and Google Scholar [Skywork.ai] [PromptLoop].
Claims regarding the scale of the underlying data vary across public sources:
- Profile volume. Different launch materials cite conflicting totals, from “200 million+ people profiles” [Fondo] to “800 million+ people profiles” [Product Hunt]. The company’s own site references “hundreds of millions of unique profiles” [Clado, company site].
- Search capability. The system is marketed as being able to match custom, complex criteria across this dataset.
- Team-centric design. Atlas is “built around teams,” signaling features for collaboration, shared lists, and permissioning [Clado, company site] [Product Hunt].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Product claims are sourced from company and founder channels, but key technical details and scale metrics lack independent corroboration and show inconsistency.
Market Size and Demand
The market for AI-powered people intelligence is expanding as sales and recruiting teams seek to replace manual, keyword-based search with intent-driven discovery. The global sales intelligence software market was valued at $2.8 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to $4.7 billion by 2027 [MarketsandMarkets, 2022]. Clado's wedge sits at the intersection of sales intelligence and recruiting software.
Demand is driven by the increasing volume of professional data and the need for tools that can synthesize this information efficiently. In sales, the push for personalized, account-based outreach requires richer prospect profiles. In recruiting, the ability to find candidates based on skills, projects, or research interests is a persistent challenge. Clado's positioning as a "ground-truth platform" speaks directly to this need for verified, enriched data [Clado, company site].
Regulatory and macro forces present a complex backdrop. Data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA impose strict requirements on the collection and use of personal data. The company's early client base, reported to include firms specializing in AI and data labeling, suggests an initial focus on a niche that is less sensitive to broad economic cycles [The SaaS News].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing is based on analogous, publicly reported segments; specific TAM for Clado's product is not confirmed.
Who Else Is Fighting for This
Clado enters a crowded market for people intelligence, positioning itself as a semantic search and enrichment platform for teams.
| Company | Positioning | Stage / Funding | Notable Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clado | AI-powered semantic search and enrichment for sales and recruiting teams. | Seed ($2M) [The SaaS News] | Focus on intent-based matching and team collaboration features. |
| Apollo | Sales intelligence platform with a large B2B contact database and engagement tools. | Series C ($100M+) [Crunchbase] | Extensive, continuously updated database and integrated sales workflow. |
| Clay | Personal CRM and relationship management platform for professionals. | Series A ($13M) [Crunchbase] | Focus on personal network enrichment and relationship tracking. |
| ZoomInfo | Enterprise go-to-market intelligence platform with deep company and contact data. | Public (Nasdaq: ZI) | Unmatched scale of verified B2B data and direct integrations with major CRM systems. |
Clado's current defensible edge appears to be its technology wedge, the semantic search capability described in its launch materials [LinkedIn]. This is a perishable advantage, as larger competitors could replicate similar natural language query features. The company's most significant exposure is to the scale and distribution power of established incumbents. Clado lacks public evidence of deep CRM partnerships or a large, proprietary data moat. Its profile count claims vary between sources, from 200 million to 800 million, indicating the core data asset may still be in flux [Fondo][Product Hunt].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor stages and funding are confirmed via Crunchbase, but Clado's differentiator is based on company claims only.
Opportunity
If Clado can establish its semantic search and enrichment platform as the default method for discovering and qualifying human talent at scale, the prize is a central position in the multi-billion-dollar people intelligence and sales tech stack. The headline opportunity is to become the category-defining platform for intent-based people discovery, moving beyond static databases to a dynamic, query-driven system.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst |
|---|---|---|
| Dominance in Technical Recruiting | Clado becomes the primary sourcing tool for tech recruiters, especially for niche AI/ML roles. | A major partnership with a leading ATS or recruiting platform. |
| Embedded API for the Sales Stack | Clado's search and enrichment API gets bundled into CRM platforms and sales engagement tools. | A formal integration or partnership announcement with a major sales tech vendor. |
Compounding for Clado would manifest as a data and query flywheel. Each new enterprise team using the platform generates proprietary search patterns and success signals. This behavioral data could continuously improve the ranking and relevance of search results. The $2 million seed round led by Valor Equity Partners provides a baseline of institutional validation for pursuing an outcome of this magnitude [The SaaS News].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Growth scenarios are extrapolated from product claims and investor composition; specific catalyst details are not public.
Sources
- [The SaaS News] Clado Raises $2 Million Seed Round | https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/clado-raises-2-million-seed-round
- [Clado, company site] | https://clado.ai
- [LinkedIn] Today we launched our new platform: Clado Atlas | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomzhengy_today-we-launched-our-new-platform-clado-activity-7352154750315876354-dXEi
- [BetaKit] Team of Toronto talent unites after Y Combinator to build Clado | https://betakit.com/team-of-toronto-talent-unites-after-y-combinator-to-build-clado/
- [Y Combinator] Clado: Deep Research for People | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/clado
- [Product Hunt] Clado | https://www.producthunt.com/products/clado
- [Fondo] Clado Launches | https://www.fondo.com/blog/clado-launches
- [PromptLoop] What Does Clado Do? | https://www.promptloop.com/directory/what-does-clado-ai-do
- [Skywork.ai] | https://skywork.ai
- [SourceForge] Clado Reviews in 2026 | https://sourceforge.net/software/product/Clado/
- [MarketsandMarkets, 2022] | https://www.marketsandmarkets.com
- [Crunchbase] | https://www.crunchbase.com
- [ZoomInfo] | https://www.zoominfo.com
Articles about Clado
- Clado's Atlas Platform Targets the Perfect Search for Sales and Recruiting — The YC-backed startup uses semantic queries to sift through hundreds of millions of profiles, betting on team workflows over simple list pulls.