Octolane, a company that provides the first AI-driven CRM that automates sales actions and CRM updates, announced an oversubscribed $2.6 million seed round. Launched by two young immigrants, Octolane challenges legacy CRM providers with a new AI-based platform that automates sales actions and CRM updates.
Some of the investors include angels Brian Shin (one of the earliest investors in both HubSpot and Drift), Kulveer Taggar, Cindy Bi (CapitalX), and Dave Messina (Pioneer Fund). Y Combinator, Lan Xuezhao (Basis Set Ventures), and General Catalyst Apex also joined.
Octolane will utilize the funds primarily to expand its team and for infrastructure investments that will allow it to meet the strong demand for its platform.
Octolane is looking to solve a problem where traditional methods force sales teams to spend hours manually entering data after every customer interaction. Reps generally do not like using them because they create work rather than reducing it.
Octolane transforms CRM from a passive System of Record that demands constant manual updates into an intelligent System of Actions that predicts and executes the next steps needed to close deals. And when reps log into Octolane in the morning, instead of a list of administrative to-dos, they see a list of actions already executed with recommendations for further steps reps can take to see deals progress. So reps can spend their time actually selling.
Octolane was co-founded by immigrants One Chowdhury and Md Abdul Halim Rafi – who are best friends since high school who taught themselves to code by watching YouTube tutorials.
Chowdhury was inspired to start a company after a visit to San Francisco and seeing Salesforce tower. Chowdhury dropped out of Duke University (Class of 2025) to start Octolane.
Octolane, launched earlier this year and it has 200 active customers with 5,000 more on a waitlist.
KEY QUOTES:
“Octolane’s daily company updates on Twitter caught my attention so I went to visit their SF office on a Sunday. About half an hour in, I decided to invest after learning about the founders’ journey to the U.S., talking about their ambitions, and checking their product demo. It’s obvious that Octolane has a very strong market pull from customers of all sizes that are eager to switch from Salesforce and HubSpot and that’s how an AI-first CRM should be: a system of actions, not just records. Each interaction I’ve had with the Octolane team boosts my confidence because you can tell that nothing can stop them from earning more customers from this $300 billion market cap opportunity.”
– Investor Cindy Bi
“What drew me to Octolane was their rare combination of customer obsession and extraordinary output. They’re constantly shipping improvements based on real user feedback. One and Rafi understand that retention is the true north star in this space, and they’ve been bold enough to tackle the CRM category with genuinely fresh thinking. Seeing fast-growing companies switch to their platform validates that this approach is exactly what the market has been waiting for.”
– Investor Kulveer Taggar
“A CRM is critical for managing inbound volume, but most tools slow us down more than they help. With Octolane, we finally found a system that just works. It automatically qualifies leads using AI, and the built-in calendar makes it seamless for high-intent leads to book meetings. We replaced 5–6 other fragmented tools and core HubSpot functionalities with Octolane, which saves thousands of dollars every month, plus deals close faster. Octolane feels like Rippling, but for CRM: everything we need in one place, finally working together. The Octolane team is one of the most reliable we’ve worked with, and the product has become a core part of how we grow.”
– Evie Wang, Co-Founder of Retell AI
