Avarra has raised $17 million in Series A funding following a year in which the AI company increased annual recurring revenue by more than 400% and expanded its product from sales-training simulations into a broader AI avatar platform for go-to-market organizations. Duration Ventures led the financing, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Draper Associates, GTMfund, Alumni Ventures, and a strategic investment from Zoom.
Avarra’s platform is built on the premise that AI can improve sales team performance by helping employees develop and execute complex sales processes rather than focusing primarily on automating routine work.
The company’s AI avatars can prepare sales representatives for customer calls, participate in live transactions to provide expertise and interact directly with buyers online.
Avarra seeks to capture expertise from an organization’s leaders and specialists and then make that knowledge available throughout its go-to-market organization.
Because its internal coaching avatars and customer-facing avatars can operate from the same playbook, updates to a company’s sales approach can be reflected across both employee development and customer interactions.
Customers include Elastic, Masimo, Proofpoint, Netskope and Owner.com.
Avarra said customers have reduced sales ramp time by roughly half, while multiple large organizations have deployed its technology across more than 1,000 go-to-market employees.
Contracted ARR from mid-market and enterprise customers increased 698% year over year, and sales teams now conduct more than 10,000 AI coaching and role-play sessions through Avarra every week.
The platform also collects information from practice sessions and live interactions to give sales leadership greater insight into which behaviors and sales strategies are working.
Avarra plans to use the new capital for engineering and go-to-market hiring and to expand the customer-facing capabilities of the platform.
KEY QUOTES:
“Revenue teams are the engine that drives businesses forward, and Avarra has built a distinctive platform that combines the power of AI with the unique human touch critical to what they do. Zoom Ventures seeks to support AI-native companies that strategically align with our goals of driving important innovation forward. We are delighted to be part of their next chapter of growth.”
Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom
“As Proofpoint has accelerated our growth in data security and AI, we needed a way to get every seller confident talking about all our new capabilities. Avarra gives our reps a place to practice those conversations and get coached until they’ve nailed it. We’ve seen sellers improve 33% from their first attempt to their final one, with better objection handling, value narrative and discovery after coaching.”
Blake P. Sallé, Chief Revenue Officer at Proofpoint
“I backed the Avarra team at seed, and the past year has proved the thesis. AI avatars working collaboratively with humans can dramatically scale GTM team productivity driving both revenue growth and customer satisfaction. When we started Duration Ventures, leading this round was one of the first things we wanted to do because we believe Avarra is defining the future of work.”
Arif Janmohamed, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Duration Ventures
“The ability for AI to automate mundane tasks is well documented, but we see the real power of AI in upskilling how people execute complex, collaborative, high-value processes. Every sales leader wants their team to sell the way they would. We capture how teams actually win. Then every rep, CSM and line leader gets their own avatar coach on their own schedule, and an avatar expert sitting next to them on every live deal. The companies winning with AI aren’t replacing their people. They’re investing to make their people irreplaceable.”
David Knight, CEO of Avarra
“The biggest behavior change Avarra has unlocked is for sales reps to own their own development more. They’re no longer reliant on just their sales manager as their source of practice.”
Kyle Norton, Former CRO of Owner.com
“With Avarra, our sellers practice high-stakes conversations before they’re in front of a customer. They rehearse with realistic AI buyers, get scored feedback right away and improve with each attempt, while managers coach to what the transcripts show.”
Darrel Mitchell, Director of WW Field Enablement at Netskope
“Every enterprise is now figuring out how its people and its AI learn from each other. The core idea behind Avarra is to capture the expertise that lives inside a company and put it to work across the whole team, human or AI. We backed David and the team at seed, and since then Avarra has seen strong enterprise traction. We believe this is a category-defining platform in the making, and we’re delighted to double down.”
Guru Chahal, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners
“AI’s real power isn’t replacing people, it’s helping them scale their impact. Nowhere is that clearer than in institutional knowledge and training.”
Andy Tang, Partner at Draper Associates
