Octolane AI has raised US$2.6Mn in funding to develop its AI-powered customer relationship management (CRM) platform, aimed at reducing manual data entry and streamlining sales workflows. The platform is designed to automate CRM updates and repetitive sales tasks, allowing sales teams to focus on closing deals rather than administrative work. The funding round included participation from Brian Shin who was an early investor in HubSpot and Drift, Kulveer Taggar, Cindy Bi  of CapitalX, Lan Xuezhao  of Basis Set Ventures, Dave Messina  of Pioneer Fund, Arash Ferdowsi, and General Catalyst Apex—the new early-stage initiative from General Catalyst.

The company reports that its platform saves sales teams over 25 hours per week on average by auto-updating records and prompting next steps. Since launching earlier this year, Octolane has signed up 200 customers, with an additional 5,000 companies on its waitlist. Many early adopters are reportedly switching from legacy tools like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Co-founded by One C. and Md Abdul Halim Rafi, the idea for Octolane was born out of firsthand frustration with existing CRM platforms. One C., who left Duke University after a visit to San Francisco, noted that widespread dissatisfaction with traditional CRM tools revealed a gap in the market. Rafi shares that through Octolane, they are “trying to fix what’s broken in sales” and he believes this raise will give them “the fuel to keep going—to prove that AI can finally take the admin out of CRM and let reps focus on what they do best: selling.”

The funding will support Octolane's efforts to scale its platform, continue onboarding new customers, and further differentiate itself in a competitive market by focusing on automation and usability in enterprise sales operations.