20 AI Sales, Marketing & GTM CEOs You Need to Know in 2026
Enterprise revenue teams depend on software to find customers, close deals, and grow. The CEOs building that software are defining how companies operate in the AI era. From CRM platforms and sales intelligence to conversational marketing and AI SDR agents, these leaders are rewriting the playbook for how organizations generate and convert pipeline.
1. 6sense: Chris Ball, CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: $500M+ | Valuation: ~$5.2B
Chris Ball became CEO of 6sense in September 2025, taking over a company that reached over $250M ARR under his predecessor. Ball arrives as 6sense transitions from an ABM and intent data platform into what the company calls an agent-powered Revenue Intelligence system - one that acts on buyer signals autonomously, not just surfaces them.
Ball brings more than two decades of enterprise software leadership. He was President and COO of Instructure before its $4.8B acquisition by KKR, and held senior roles at Adobe and SAP scaling go-to-market operations. His operational background maps directly onto what 6sense needs: converting category leadership into durable enterprise revenue at scale.
2. Apollo.io: Matt Curl, CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$251M | Valuation: $1.6B
Matt Curl became CEO of Apollo.io in February 2026, promoted from COO after reinforcing the company's foundation for over a year. Co-founder Tim Zheng built Apollo from near-collapse in 2020 to $100M ARR in under two years through a freemium, product-led growth model. Curl inherited that foundation and has since grown the company to nearly $200M ARR with close to 100,000 paying customers.
Curl joined in mid-2024 with a background scaling GTM infrastructure at Checkr and Fivestars. Under his leadership, Apollo launched an AI Assistant that helps users book 2.3x more meetings per account, acquired revenue intelligence platform Pocus, and built native connectors into Claude and ChatGPT. Zheng remains as Board Chair.
3. Clay: Kareem Amin, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: New York, NY | Total Funding: ~$210M | Valuation: $5B (January 2026 tender)
Kareem Amin co-founded Clay in 2017 to give non-engineers the power of programmable workflows. The company spent five years finding the right wedge before landing on go-to-market, creating what is now the defining platform of a new profession: GTM Engineering.
Clay's platform connects 50+ data sources, applies AI enrichment, and automates personalized outbound at scale. It has become the tool of choice for growth teams at OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, and Intercom. Clay hit $100M ARR in December 2025 and raised a $100M Series C at a $3.1B valuation in August 2025. A second employee tender offer in January 2026 valued the company at $5B - tripling in value within a single year.
4. Clari + Salesloft: Steve Cox, CEO
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, CA & Atlanta, GA | Combined Funding: $900M+
Steve Cox was appointed CEO when Clari and Salesloft merged in December 2025, bringing together the leading revenue forecasting platform and the leading sales engagement platform. Cox has 25+ years of SaaS leadership experience, including CEO roles at Employ and Community Brands.
The combined platform connects pipeline creation to close through shared data, unified AI, and one system of action. It already serves thousands of enterprise customers including Adobe, IBM, 3M, and Zoom. In March 2026, the company announced a strategic partnership with 1mind and the sunset of its legacy Drift conversational marketing product. Cox was recognized in the inaugural Gartner Magic Quadrant for Revenue Action Orchestration in April 2026.
5. Demandbase: Gabe Rogol, CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$320M
Gabe Rogol has led Demandbase as CEO for several years, spending over a decade at the company building what is now the definitive pipeline AI platform for B2B enterprises. The platform unifies account intelligence, intent data, advertising, and sales orchestration into a single system.
In April 2026, Rogol unveiled Demandbase AI - a total platform transformation built around a conversational interface and proprietary Context Intelligence layer that translates account signals into pipeline actions. Demandbase was named a Leader in both The Forrester Wave for Marketing and Sales Data Providers and The Forrester Wave for Revenue Marketing Platforms in Q1 2026. It has appeared in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ABM Platforms for five consecutive years.
6. Gong: Amit Bendov, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$584M | Valuation: $7.25B (last primary round)
Amit Bendov co-founded Gong in 2015 with the conviction that AI could fundamentally change how sales teams understand and win customer conversations. Gong reached a $500M ARR run rate in May 2026, with over 55% year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter.
Gong's Revenue AI Operating System captures and analyzes interactions across calls, emails, and meetings, turning them into actionable pipeline intelligence. The company was named to Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies list in the Applied AI category in March 2026. Bendov reports signing million-dollar-plus enterprise contracts at a pace not seen before and is preparing toward an IPO while remaining nearly profitable from its 2021 Series E capital.
7. HubSpot: Yamini Rangan, CEO
Headquarters: Cambridge, MA | NASDAQ: HUBS | Revenue: $3.1B (FY2025)
Yamini Rangan has led HubSpot since 2021, accelerating the company's transformation from an SMB marketing tool into a comprehensive AI-native front-office platform. HubSpot delivered $3.1B in revenue for FY2025 at 18.2% constant currency growth, with FY2026 guidance of $3.69-$3.70B.
What defined 2025 for HubSpot was AI momentum. Breeze AI agents are embedded across the platform, with the Customer Agent activated by over 8,000 customers at a mid-60% resolution rate and the Prospecting Agent activated by over 10,000 customers. Rangan's strategy of embedding AI across an integrated platform rather than bolting it on has positioned HubSpot as the customer platform of choice for AI-native companies like Lovable, Browserbase, and Squint.ai.
8. Jasper: Timothy Young, CEO
Headquarters: Austin, TX | Total Funding: ~$131M | Valuation: ~$1.5B
Timothy Young leads Jasper as CEO, appointed by founder Dave Rogenmoser to scale enterprise ambitions. Young, formerly President of Dropbox, arrived as Jasper pivoted from a broad AI writing assistant into a focused AI copilot for enterprise marketing teams.
Jasper has built its identity around brand voice consistency, on-brand content generation at scale, and integrations into existing marketing workflows. The company has $88M in ARR and 100,000+ customers. Its differentiation is the depth of brand intelligence it can encode - ensuring that AI-generated content sounds like the company, not like a generic language model.
9. Mutiny: Jaleh Rezaei, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$72M
Jaleh Rezaei co-founded Mutiny to solve a problem she experienced as Head of Marketing at Gusto: B2B websites are built for the average visitor, not for the high-value account worth converting. Mutiny's AI-powered personalization platform lets enterprise marketing teams deliver tailored website experiences to target accounts at scale.
Rezaei, a mechanical engineer by training, has built Mutiny with Sequoia and Insight Partners backing into the reference platform for account-based website personalization. After a major product pivot completed in 2025 - bringing agentic pipeline generation to the forefront - she gathered 50 marketing leaders from top enterprises for a product soft-launch. The reaction to the new capability was immediate.
10. Qualified (acquired by Salesforce): Kraig Swensrud, Co-Founder & former CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$163M | Acquired by Salesforce, April 2026
Kraig Swensrud co-founded Qualified with fellow Salesforce alumni Sean Whiteley to solve the problem that every B2B marketing team ignores: the website visitor who doesn't fill out a form. Qualified's flagship product, Piper the AI SDR Agent, runs as an always-on presence on enterprise websites - engaging inbound visitors, qualifying intent, and booking meetings without human intervention.
Salesforce announced the acquisition in December 2025 and closed in April 2026. Swensrud and his co-founders rejoined Salesforce to bring agentic marketing into the Agentforce ecosystem. Piper has 600+ enterprise customers and holds the #1 rating for AI SDR agents on G2.
11. Salesforce: Marc Benioff, Chair & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | NYSE: CRM | FY2026 Revenue: $41.5B
Marc Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999 and has spent 25 years building the world's largest CRM platform. In 2026, he is executing the most significant product reinvention of his career: Agentforce, the autonomous AI agent platform for sales, marketing, and service workflows.
Salesforce delivered FY2026 revenue of $41.5B - up 10% year-over-year. Benioff reported that six of Salesforce's top ten deals in recent quarters were driven by enterprises specifically seeking to transform with Agentforce. His acquisitions of Informatica (for $8B, the data layer) and Qualified (the agentic marketing front door) sketch a Salesforce betting on owning both the data and engagement layers of the agentic enterprise. Nearly 10,000 paid Agentforce deals have been signed since its September 2024 launch.
12. Seismic: Doug Winter, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Diego, CA | Total Funding: ~$450M | Valuation: $3B+
Doug Winter co-founded Seismic to solve sales enablement at enterprise scale - making sure every seller has the right content at the right time for the right buyer interaction. The platform has evolved into a comprehensive AI-powered enablement intelligence system, helping revenue teams across training, coaching, and content management at IBM, American Express, and T. Rowe Price.
In an AI era where the volume of customer-facing content has exploded, Seismic's role as the intelligence layer for how reps use content effectively has become more valuable. Winter has built Seismic into one of the most enterprise-entrenched platforms in the GTM stack, with deep integrations into Salesforce, Microsoft, and major CRM environments.
13. Writer: May Habib, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$369M | Valuation: ~$1.9B
May Habib co-founded Writer in 2020 - originally as Qordoba, a content localization platform - and has built it into the leading full-stack enterprise AI platform for agentic work. Where most AI writing tools target individual productivity, Writer's platform is built for the enterprise use case: deploying AI agents that execute complex, mission-critical workflows across teams and systems.
Writer raised a $200M Series C at a $1.9B valuation in November 2024, with investors including Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, IBM Ventures, and ICONIQ Growth. Customers including Uber, Intuit, Accenture, and Vanguard are using Writer for mission-critical operations. Habib was named to Inc.'s Female Founders list and the Forbes AI 50.
14. ZoomInfo: Henry Schuck, Founder & CEO
Headquarters: Vancouver, WA | NASDAQ: GTM | Revenue: $1.25B (FY2025)
Henry Schuck founded ZoomInfo in 2007 and scaled it into the leading go-to-market intelligence platform for enterprise sales and marketing teams. He famously changed the company's stock ticker from ZI to GTM to signal where the category is headed. ZoomInfo delivered $1.25B in FY2025 revenue, exceeding guidance.
ZoomInfo Copilot, the company's flagship AI product, generated $250M in ACV just 18 months after launch - faster monetization than most SaaS companies see across their entire lifecycle. Schuck built Copilot on a data flywheel that ZoomInfo has been constructing for nearly two decades: proprietary firmographic, technographic, and intent data that gives its AI a signal advantage over competitors building on third-party sources.
15. Artisan: Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$25M+
Jaspar Carmichael-Jack co-founded Artisan to build AI-powered business process workers - what the company calls "Artisans" - that automate entire job functions end-to-end, starting with Ava, the AI BDR. Rather than building AI tools that sit alongside human SDRs, Artisan is betting that AI can replace the entire SDR function: autonomous prospecting, research, personalized outreach, and follow-up across email and LinkedIn, without a human in the loop.
Carmichael-Jack was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and founded the company while still in his early twenties. Artisan's "Stop Hiring Humans" billboard campaign became a lightning rod for debate in 2024. In a market where AI SDR adoption accelerated through 2025, Artisan is one of the most aggressive voices for the agentic, fully autonomous future of sales development.
16. 11x: Hasan Sukkar, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: London, UK | Total Funding: ~$50M+
Hasan Sukkar co-founded 11x with a clean thesis: AI digital workers - not AI-augmented human workers - represent the future of sales. 11x's platform deploys AI agents including Alice (the AI SDR) and Jordan (the AI phone agent) that autonomously handle prospecting, outreach, lead qualification, and analytics.
11x has attracted backing from notable investors and become one of the most referenced AI SDR platforms in the rapidly growing agentic sales category. Sukkar is building at a moment when enterprise buyers are moving from curiosity about AI SDRs to production deployment. His London headquarters makes 11x one of the most prominent European players in the AI-native sales stack.
17. Read AI: David Shim, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$50M+
David Shim co-founded Read AI to bring AI intelligence to the meeting layer of enterprise GTM - the calls, demos, and customer conversations where deals are actually won and lost. Read AI's platform provides meeting summaries, sentiment analysis, engagement scoring, and CRM-ready insights from video calls and async communications.
Shim has built Read AI into a platform used by GTM teams across the enterprise spectrum. His thesis resonates in the agentic era: as AI agents increasingly take action on behalf of go-to-market teams, the data from human-to-human interactions becomes more valuable, not less. Understanding the texture of a live customer conversation is still where deals are made or lost.
18. AirOps: Alex Halliday, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$15M+
Alex Halliday co-founded AirOps to help marketing and content teams build AI-powered workflows for a fundamentally new distribution reality: in a world where AI agents are increasingly acting as research intermediaries, content doesn't just need to rank on Google - it needs to be cited by AI.
AirOps helps teams like Webflow and Descript structure content for higher visibility in AI overviews, ChatGPT citations, and agent-driven discovery. Halliday has helped define this category as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). The shift from SEO to GEO is one of the most consequential changes in B2B marketing in a decade.
19. Fathom: Richard White, Founder & CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA | Total Funding: ~$20M+
Richard White founded Fathom with a deceptively simple thesis: the AI meeting assistant should be the best product in the HubSpot App Marketplace, not an afterthought. Fathom has become the #1 ranked AI notetaker and meeting assistant in that ecosystem, serving tens of thousands of HubSpot customers and millions of teams worldwide.
The company operates with fewer than 150 employees - an extraordinary output-to-headcount ratio that makes it one of the most capital-efficient AI GTM companies in the market. White argues that evaluating vendors based on "can it do a thing?" is insufficient - teams need to develop entirely new acumen for judging whether AI output is actually high quality.
20. Highspot: Robert Wahbe, Co-Founder & CEO
Headquarters: Seattle, WA | Total Funding: ~$654M | Merging with Seismic, 2026
Robert Wahbe co-founded Highspot in 2012 after 15 years as Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. The platform has become the highest-rated revenue enablement solution in its category, serving 20 million users and helping go-to-market teams connect content, guidance, training, coaching, and engagement analytics in a single system.
Highspot was named a Leader in the inaugural 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Revenue Enablement Platforms with the highest score for Ability to Execute. The company launched its GTM Agent at its Spring 2026 conference - an agentic AI that connects signals across live deals and turns them into clear next-best actions for sellers. In February 2026, Seismic and Highspot announced a merger, signaling how the category is converging around AI-native revenue execution.
The State of the Category
The AI sales, marketing, and GTM category raised $3.7B in the first months of 2026 alone. Investor conviction is concentrating on companies using autonomous AI agents to carry out marketing and customer service workflows - a shift from the rules-based automation of the prior decade.
The boundary between "AI tool" and "AI agent" is where every company on this list is competing. What separates the leaders is a combination of proprietary data (ZoomInfo, 6sense), depth of workflow integration (Clay, Gong), and the conviction to build toward outcomes rather than features.
Learn more about AI for Marketing and AI for Sales to understand how these tools and platforms are reshaping revenue operations.
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