Lightfield, a buyer relationship administration platform constructed fully round synthetic intelligence, formally launched to the general public this week after a yr of quiet improvement — a daring pivot by a startup that when had 20 million customers and $43 million within the financial institution constructing one thing fully completely different.
The San Francisco-based firm is positioning itself as a elementary reimagining of how companies monitor and handle buyer relationships, abandoning the guide information entry that has outlined CRMs for many years in favor of a system that routinely captures, organizes, and acts on buyer interactions. With greater than 100 early prospects already utilizing the platform day by day — over half spending greater than an hour per day within the system — Lightfield is a direct problem to the legacy enterprise fashions of Salesforce and HubSpot, each of which generate billions in annual income.
"The CRM, categorically, is maybe essentially the most advanced and lowest satisfaction piece of software program on Earth," stated Keith Peiris, Lightfield's co-founder and CEO, in an unique interview with VentureBeat. "CRM corporations have tens of hundreds of thousands of customers, and also you'd be hard-pressed to discover a single one who really loves the product. That drawback is our alternative."
The common availability announcement marks an uncommon inflection level in enterprise software program: an organization betting that enormous language fashions have superior sufficient to switch structured databases as the muse of business-critical techniques. It's a wager that has attracted backing from Coatue Administration, which led the corporate's Sequence A when it was nonetheless constructing presentation software program beneath the title Tome.
How Tome's founders deserted 20 million customers to construct a CRM from scratch
The story behind Lightfield's creation displays each conviction and pragmatism. Tome had achieved important viral success as an AI-powered presentation platform, gaining hundreds of thousands of customers who appreciated its visible design and ease of use. However Peiris stated the workforce concluded that constructing lasting differentiation within the general-purpose presentation market would show troublesome, even with a working product and actual consumer traction.
"Tome went viral as an AI slides product, and it was visually pleasant and simple to make use of—the primary actual generative AI-based presentation platform," Peiris defined. "However, the extra folks used it, the extra I noticed that to actually assist folks talk one thing—something—we wanted extra context."
That realization led to a elementary rethinking. The workforce noticed that the best communication requires deep understanding of relationships, firm dynamics, and ongoing conversations — context that exists most richly in gross sales and customer-facing roles. Slightly than constructing a horizontal instrument for everybody, they determined to construct vertically for go-to-market groups.
"We selected this lane, 'gross sales,' as a result of so many individuals in these roles used Tome, and it appeared like essentially the most logical place to go vertical," Peiris stated. The workforce diminished headcount to a core group of engineers and spent a yr constructing in stealth.
Dan Rose, a companion at Coatue who led the unique funding in Tome, stated the pivot validated his conviction within the founding workforce. "It takes actual guts to pivot, and much more so when the unique product is working," Rose stated. "They shrunk the workforce all the way down to a core group of engineers and started working constructing Lightfield. This was not a simple product to construct, this can be very advanced beneath the hood."
Why Lightfield shops full conversations as an alternative of forcing information into fields
What distinguishes Lightfield from conventional CRMs is architectural, not beauty. Whereas Salesforce, HubSpot, and their rivals require customers to outline inflexible information schemas upfront — dropdown menus, customized fields, checkbox classes — after which manually populate these fields after each interplay, Lightfield shops the whole, unstructured document of what prospects really say and do.
"Conventional CRMs power each interplay via predefined fields — they're compressing wealthy, nuanced buyer conversations into structured database entries," Peiris stated. "We retailer buyer information in its uncooked, lossless type. Which means we're capturing considerably extra element and context than a conventional CRM ever may."
In observe, this implies the system routinely data and transcribes gross sales calls, ingests emails, screens product utilization, and maintains what the corporate calls a "relationship timeline" — an entire chronological document of each touchpoint between an organization and its prospects. AI fashions then extract structured info from this uncooked information on demand, permitting corporations to reorganize their information mannequin with out guide rework.
"Should you understand you want completely different fields or need to reorganize your schema fully, the system can remap and refill itself routinely," Peiris defined. "You're not locked into selections you made on day one if you barely understood your gross sales course of."
The system additionally generates assembly preparation briefs, drafts follow-up emails primarily based on dialog context, and might be queried in pure language — capabilities that signify a departure from the passive database mannequin that has outlined CRMs because the class's inception within the Eighties.
Gross sales groups report reviving useless offers and chopping response instances from months to days
Buyer testimonials counsel the automation delivers measurable influence, notably for small groups with out devoted gross sales operations workers. Tyler Postle, co-founder of Voker.ai, stated Lightfield's AI agent helped him revive greater than 40 stalled alternatives in a single two-hour session — leads he had uncared for for six months whereas utilizing HubSpot.
"Inside 2 days, 10 of these had been revived and have become energetic opps that moved to poc," Postle stated. "The issue was, as an alternative of being a instrument of motion and autotracking—HubSpot was a instrument the place I needed to do the work to document buyer convos. Utilizing HubSpot I used to be a knowledge hygienist. Utilizing Lighfield, I’m a more in-depth."
Postle reported that his response instances to prospects improved from weeks or months to 1 or two days, a change noticeable sufficient that prospects commented on it. "Our prospects and prospects have even observed it," he stated.
Radu Spineanu, co-founder of Humble Ops, highlighted a particular function that addresses what he views as the first reason for misplaced offers: easy neglect. "The killer function is asking 'who haven't I adopted up with?'" Spineanu stated. "Most offers die from neglect, not rejection. Lightfield catches these dropped threads and might draft and ship the follow-up instantly. That's prevented a minimum of three offers from going chilly this quarter."
Spineanu had evaluated competing trendy CRMs together with Attio and Clay earlier than deciding on Lightfield, dismissing Salesforce and HubSpot as "constructed for a distinct period." He stated these platforms assume corporations have devoted operations groups to configure workflows and keep information high quality — sources most early-stage corporations lack.
Why Y Combinator startups are rejecting Salesforce and beginning with AI-native instruments
Peiris claims that the present batch of Y Combinator startups — broadly considered as a bellwether for early-stage firm conduct — have largely rejected each Salesforce and HubSpot. "Should you had been to ballot a random sampling of present YC startups and ask whether or not they're utilizing Salesforce or HubSpot, the overwhelming reply could be 'no,'" he stated. "Salesforce is simply too costly, too advanced to arrange, and admittedly doesn't do sufficient to justify the funding for an early-stage firm."
Based on Peiris, most startups start with spreadsheets and finally graduate to a primary CRM — a transition level the place Lightfield goals to intercede. "More and more, they're selecting Lightfield as an alternative and skipping that intermediate step fully," he stated.
This represents a well-known sample in enterprise software program disruption: a brand new technology of corporations forming habits round completely different instruments, creating a gap for challengers to ascertain themselves earlier than companies develop giant sufficient to face strain towards industry-standard platforms.
Rose, the Coatue companion, sees Lightfield's technique as intentionally focusing on this window. "Our technique is to construct shortly and develop alongside our greatest prospects, basically changing into the Salesforce for this new technology of corporations," Rose stated, paraphrasing the corporate's method. "We're there in the beginning after they're forming their processes, and we scale with them as they develop."
Can Salesforce and HubSpot retrofit their legacy techniques for AI, or is the structure too outdated?
Each Salesforce and HubSpot have introduced AI options in latest quarters, including capabilities like dialog intelligence and automatic information entry to their current platforms. The query dealing with Lightfield is whether or not established distributors can incorporate related capabilities—leveraging their current buyer bases and integrations — or whether or not elementary architectural variations create a real moat.
Peiris argues the latter. "The elemental distinction is in how we retailer information," he stated. "As a result of we have now entry to that full context, the evaluation we offer and the work we generate tends to be considerably increased high quality than instruments constructed on prime of conventional database buildings."
Current dialog intelligence instruments like Gong and Income.io, which analyze gross sales calls and supply teaching insights, already serve related features however require Salesforce situations to function. Peiris stated Lightfield's benefit comes from unifying your complete information mannequin reasonably than layering evaluation on prime of fragmented techniques.
"We’ve a extra full image of every buyer as a result of we combine firm data, communication sync, product analytics, and full CRM element multi function place," he stated. "That unified context means the work being generated in Lightfield—whether or not it's evaluation, follow-ups, or insights—tends to be considerably increased high quality."
The privateness and accuracy considerations that include AI-automated buyer interactions
The structure creates apparent dangers. Storing full dialog histories raises privateness considerations, and counting on giant language fashions to extract and interpret info introduces the potential for errors—what AI researchers name hallucinations.
Peiris acknowledged each points immediately. On privateness, the corporate maintains that decision recording follows commonplace practices, with seen notifications that recording is in progress, and that storing gross sales correspondence mirrors what CRM distributors have achieved for many years. The corporate has achieved SOC 2 Sort I certification and is pursuing each SOC 2 Sort II and HIPAA compliance. "We don't practice fashions on buyer information, interval," Peiris stated.
On accuracy, he was equally forthright. "In fact it occurs," Peiris stated when requested about misinterpretations. "It's unattainable to fully get rid of hallucinations when working with giant language fashions."
The corporate's method is to require human approval earlier than sending buyer communications or updating crucial fields — positioning the system as augmentation reasonably than full automation. "We're constructing a instrument that amplifies human judgment, not one which pretends to switch it fully," Peiris stated.
This can be a extra cautious stance than some AI-native software program corporations have taken, reflecting each technical realism about present mannequin capabilities and potential legal responsibility considerations round customer-facing errors.
How Lightfield plans to consolidate ten completely different gross sales instruments into one platform
Lightfield's pricing technique displays a broader thesis about enterprise software program economics. Slightly than charging per-seat charges for some extent answer, the corporate is positioning itself as a consolidated platform that may change a number of specialised instruments — gross sales engagement platforms, dialog intelligence techniques, assembly assistants, and the CRM itself.
"The actual drawback is that operating a contemporary go-to-market operate requires cobbling collectively 10 completely different unbiased level options," Peiris stated. "Once you pay for 10 separate seat licenses, you're basically paying 10 completely different corporations to resolve the identical foundational issues time and again."
The corporate operates primarily via self-service signup reasonably than enterprise gross sales groups, which Peiris argues permits for decrease pricing whereas sustaining margins. This can be a frequent playbook amongst trendy SaaS corporations however represents a elementary distinction from Salesforce's mannequin, which depends closely on direct gross sales and buyer success groups.
Whether or not this method can help a sustainable enterprise at scale stays unproven. The corporate's present buyer base skews closely towards early-stage startups—greater than 100 Y Combinator corporations, in response to the corporate — a phase with restricted budgets and excessive failure charges.
Rose views this as a deliberate technique reasonably than a limitation. "Many startups that survive accomplish that as a result of they’ve robust fundamentals," he stated, explaining the corporate's thesis. "The truth is that many startups scale terribly quick — they go from 10 folks to enterprise-sized corporations in only a few years."
The wager is that Lightfield turns into the system of document for a cohort of fast-growing corporations, finally creating an put in base similar to how Salesforce established itself a long time in the past. Whether or not AI capabilities alone present adequate differentiation to execute that technique—or whether or not incumbents can adapt shortly sufficient to defend their positions—will possible decide the corporate's trajectory.
The actual take a look at: whether or not gross sales groups will belief AI sufficient to let it run their enterprise
The corporate has outlined a number of areas for growth, together with an open platform for workflows and webhooks that will enable third-party integrations. Early prospects have particularly requested connections with instruments like Apollo for prospecting and Slack for workforce communication — gaps that Postle, the Voker.ai founder, acknowledged however dismissed as short-term.
"The truth that HS and Salesforce have these integrations already isn't a moat," Postle stated. "HS and Salesforce are going to lose to lightfield as a result of they aren't AI native, regardless of how a lot they attempt to faux to be."
Rose highlighted an uncommon use case that emerged throughout Lightfield's personal improvement: the corporate's product workforce used the CRM itself to investigate buyer conversations and determine function requests. "On this sense, Lightfield greater than only a gross sales database, it's a buyer intelligence layer," Rose stated.
This means potential functions past conventional gross sales workflows, positioning the system as infrastructure for any operate that requires understanding buyer wants—product improvement, buyer success, even advertising and marketing technique.
For now, the corporate is concentrated on proving the core worth proposition with early-stage corporations. However the broader query Lightfield raises extends past CRM software program particularly: whether or not AI capabilities have superior sufficiently to switch structured databases as the muse of enterprise techniques, or whether or not the present technology of huge language fashions stays too unreliable for business-critical features.
The reply will possible emerge not from technical benchmarks however from buyer conduct—whether or not gross sales groups really belief AI-generated insights sufficient to base selections on them, and whether or not the effectivity good points justify the inherent unpredictability of working with techniques that approximate reasonably than calculate.
Lightfield is betting that the trade-off has already shifted in favor of approximation, a minimum of for the hundreds of thousands of salespeople who at the moment view their CRM as an impediment reasonably than an asset. Whether or not that wager proves right will assist outline the following technology of enterprise software program.
