We’re very pleased to share the news that Automattic has officially acquired Clay, a relationship management platform focused on improving the way people connect through technology. Last week we completed the acquisition. Now, Clay’s creative collective, which includes co-founders Zachary Hamed and Matthew Achariam, are officially members of the Automattic family. This strategic move will bring Clay’s impressive and innovative capabilities into Automattic’s growing suite of products. It will quickly add a new identity layer to their portfolio.
Clay, which launched in 2021, has created a new artificial intelligence assistant — named Nexus. This new tool gives users the ability to ask more insightful questions of their networks, empowering organizations to address and maintain their most important relationships. Clay doubles as a more intelligent address book and personal CRM. To date, it has effectively managed more than 150 million relationships.
The flagship app collects data from various social media platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, and X (formerly Twitter). It further scrapes users’ address books and calendars. Further, Clay allows users to input custom tags or notes for each entry in their address book, creating a much more seamless experience for users. The platform operates on a freemium basis. Individual users can sign up for paid plans beginning at $10 per month, and teams can sign up at $40 per seat per month.
Clay’s mission aligns closely with Automattic’s vision of fostering meaningful relationships and increasing conscientiousness among users. In a statement announcing the acquisition, the founders said they were excited to join Automattic because their values closely matched that of the company.
“One of their main ethos is this idea of open source, and the idea that that’s one of the most powerful forces of our lifetimes. And we tend to agree,” said Matthew Achariam.
Fortunately for all of us, Clay’s team over at Automattic has a long-term strategy under consideration. They intend to merge their services into Beeper, a multi-messaging platform. They are very interested in working with other open technologies like ActivityPub and AT Protocol.
Zachary Hamed highlighted the importance of longevity in their vision for Clay within Automattic:
“We are very excited about the longevity aspect of this. We believe that this should be something that exists beyond, like, any one company.”
Investors have reacted positively too to the acquisition. Clay had previously raised over $9 million in venture capital from top tier firms such as General Catalyst and Forerunner Ventures. Clay’s technology will deepen Automattic’s relational capacity tremendously and we’re thrilled to welcome them aboard! Further, it will improve the consumer experience on each of its 11 platforms.
