Lightfield, a buyer relationship administration platform constructed solely round synthetic intelligence, formally launched to the general public this week after a yr of quiet growth — 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 basic reimagining of how companies observe and handle buyer relationships, abandoning the guide information entry that has outlined CRMs for many years in favor of a system that mechanically captures, organizes, and acts on buyer interactions. With greater than 100 early prospects already utilizing the platform every 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 perhaps the most complex and lowest satisfaction piece of software on Earth," stated Keith Peiris, Lightfield's co-founder and CEO, in an unique interview with VentureBeat. "CRM companies have tens of millions of users, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single one who actually loves the product. That problem is our opportunity."
The final availability announcement marks an uncommon inflection level in enterprise software program: an organization betting that enormous language fashions have superior sufficient to interchange structured databases as the inspiration of business-critical programs. It's a wager that has attracted backing from Coatue Administration, which led the corporate's Collection 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 vital 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 crew concluded that constructing lasting differentiation within the general-purpose presentation market would show troublesome, even with a working product and actual person traction.
"Tome went viral as an AI slides product, and it was visually delightful and easy to use—the first real generative AI-based presentation platform," Peiris defined. "But, the more people used it, the more I realized that to really help people communicate something—anything—we needed more context."
That realization led to a basic rethinking. The crew 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 chose this lane, 'sales,' because so many people in these roles used Tome, and it seemed like the most logical place to go vertical," Peiris stated. The crew lowered 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 crew. "It takes real guts to pivot, and even more so when the original product is working," Rose stated. "They shrunk the team down to a core group of engineers and got to work building Lightfield. This was not an easy product to build, it is extremely complex under the hood."
Why Lightfield shops full conversations as a substitute of forcing information into fields
What distinguishes Lightfield from conventional CRMs is architectural, not beauty. Whereas Salesforce, HubSpot, and their opponents 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 entire, unstructured report of what prospects really say and do.
"Traditional CRMs force every interaction through predefined fields — they're compressing rich, nuanced customer conversations into structured database entries," Peiris stated. "We store customer data in its raw, lossless form. That means we're capturing significantly more detail and context than a traditional CRM ever could."
In observe, this implies the system mechanically information and transcribes gross sales calls, ingests emails, screens product utilization, and maintains what the corporate calls a "relationship timeline" — an entire chronological report of each touchpoint between an organization and its prospects. AI fashions then extract structured info from this uncooked information on demand, permitting firms to reorganize their information mannequin with out guide rework.
"If you realize you need different fields or want to reorganize your schema entirely, the system can remap and refill itself automatically," Peiris defined. "You're not locked into decisions you made on day one when you barely understood your sales process."
The system additionally generates assembly preparation briefs, drafts follow-up emails based mostly on dialog context, and could 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 Nineteen Eighties.
Gross sales groups report reviving lifeless offers and chopping response instances from months to days
Buyer testimonials counsel the automation delivers measurable affect, 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.
"Within 2 days, 10 of those were revived and became active opps that moved to poc," Postle stated. "The problem was, instead of being a tool of action and autotracking—HubSpot was a tool where I had to do the work to record customer convos. Using HubSpot I was a data hygienist. Using Lighfield, I’m a closer."
Postle reported that his response instances to prospects improved from weeks or months to at least one or two days, a change noticeable sufficient that prospects commented on it. "Our prospects and customers have even noticed it," he stated.
Radu Spineanu, co-founder of Humble Ops, highlighted a particular characteristic that addresses what he views as the first reason behind misplaced offers: easy neglect. "The killer feature is asking 'who haven't I followed up with?'" Spineanu stated. "Most deals die from neglect, not rejection. Lightfield catches these dropped threads and can draft and send the follow-up immediately. That's prevented at least three deals from going cold this quarter."
Spineanu had evaluated competing trendy CRMs together with Attio and Clay earlier than deciding on Lightfield, dismissing Salesforce and HubSpot as "built for a different era." He stated these platforms assume firms have devoted operations groups to configure workflows and keep information high quality — sources most early-stage firms lack.
Why Y Combinator startups are rejecting Salesforce and beginning with AI-native instruments
Peiris claims that the present batch of Y Combinator startups — extensively considered as a bellwether for early-stage firm conduct — have largely rejected each Salesforce and HubSpot. "If you were to poll a random sampling of current YC startups and ask whether they're using Salesforce or HubSpot, the overwhelming answer would be 'no,'" he stated. "Salesforce is too expensive, too complex to set up, and frankly doesn't do enough to justify the investment for an early-stage company."
In line with Peiris, most startups start with spreadsheets and ultimately graduate to a primary CRM — a transition level the place Lightfield goals to intercede. "Increasingly, they're choosing Lightfield instead and skipping that intermediate step entirely," he stated.
This represents a well-recognized sample in enterprise software program disruption: a brand new technology of firms forming habits round completely different instruments, creating a gap for challengers to determine themselves earlier than companies develop giant sufficient to face stress towards industry-standard platforms.
Rose, the Coatue companion, sees Lightfield's technique as intentionally concentrating on this window. "Our strategy is to build quickly and grow alongside our best customers, essentially becoming the Salesforce for this new generation of companies," Rose stated, paraphrasing the corporate's strategy. "We're there at the beginning when they're forming their processes, and we scale with them as they grow."
Can Salesforce and HubSpot retrofit their legacy programs for AI, or is the structure too previous?
Each Salesforce and HubSpot have introduced AI options in latest quarters, including capabilities like dialog intelligence and automatic information entry to their present platforms. The query dealing with Lightfield is whether or not established distributors can incorporate related capabilities—leveraging their present buyer bases and integrations — or whether or not basic architectural variations create a real moat.
Peiris argues the latter. "The fundamental difference is in how we store data," he stated. "Because we have access to that complete context, the analysis we provide and the work we generate tends to be substantially higher quality than tools built on top of traditional database structures."
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 somewhat than layering evaluation on prime of fragmented programs.
"We have a more complete picture of each customer because we integrate company knowledge, communication sync, product analytics, and full CRM detail all in one place," he stated. "That unified context means the work being generated in Lightfield—whether it's analysis, follow-ups, or insights—tends to be significantly higher 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 opportunity of errors—what AI researchers name hallucinations.
Peiris acknowledged each points immediately. On privateness, the corporate maintains that decision recording follows normal practices, with seen notifications that recording is in progress, and that storing gross sales correspondence mirrors what CRM distributors have performed 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 train models on customer data, period," Peiris stated.
On accuracy, he was equally forthright. "Of course it happens," Peiris stated when requested about misinterpretations. "It's impossible to completely eliminate hallucinations when working with large language models."
The corporate's strategy is to require human approval earlier than sending buyer communications or updating crucial fields — positioning the system as augmentation somewhat than full automation. "We're building a tool that amplifies human judgment, not one that pretends to replace it entirely," Peiris stated.
It is a extra cautious stance than some AI-native software program firms 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 substitute a number of specialised instruments — gross sales engagement platforms, dialog intelligence programs, assembly assistants, and the CRM itself.
"The real problem is that running a modern go-to-market function requires cobbling together 10 different independent point solutions," Peiris stated. "When you pay for 10 separate seat licenses, you're essentially paying 10 different companies to solve the same foundational problems over and over again."
The corporate operates primarily via self-service signup somewhat than enterprise gross sales groups, which Peiris argues permits for decrease pricing whereas sustaining margins. It is a frequent playbook amongst trendy SaaS firms however represents a basic distinction from Salesforce's mannequin, which depends closely on direct gross sales and buyer success groups.
Whether or not this strategy 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 firms, in keeping with the corporate — a phase with restricted budgets and excessive failure charges.
Rose views this as a deliberate technique somewhat than a limitation. "Many startups that survive do so because they have strong fundamentals," he stated, explaining the corporate's thesis. "The reality is that many startups scale extraordinarily fast — they go from 10 people to enterprise-sized companies in just a few years."
The guess is that Lightfield turns into the system of report for a cohort of fast-growing firms, ultimately creating an put in base corresponding to how Salesforce established itself many years in the past. Whether or not AI capabilities alone present enough differentiation to execute that technique—or whether or not incumbents can adapt rapidly sufficient to defend their positions—will seemingly decide the corporate's trajectory.
The true 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 enlargement, together with an open platform for workflows and webhooks that might permit third-party integrations. Early prospects have particularly requested connections with instruments like Apollo for prospecting and Slack for crew communication — gaps that Postle, the Voker.ai founder, acknowledged however dismissed as non permanent.
"The fact that HS and Salesforce have these integrations already isn't a moat," Postle stated. "HS and Salesforce are going to lose to lightfield because they aren't AI native, no matter how much they try to pretend to be."
Rose highlighted an uncommon use case that emerged throughout Lightfield's personal growth: the corporate's product crew used the CRM itself to research buyer conversations and determine characteristic requests. "In this sense, Lightfield more than just a sales database, it's a customer intelligence layer," Rose stated.
This implies potential functions past conventional gross sales workflows, positioning the system as infrastructure for any perform that requires understanding buyer wants—product growth, buyer success, even advertising technique.
For now, the corporate is concentrated on proving the core worth proposition with early-stage firms. However the broader query Lightfield raises extends past CRM software program particularly: whether or not AI capabilities have superior sufficiently to interchange structured databases as the inspiration of enterprise programs, or whether or not the present technology of enormous language fashions stays too unreliable for business-critical features.
The reply will seemingly emerge not from technical benchmarks however from buyer conduct—whether or not gross sales groups really belief AI-generated insights sufficient to base choices on them, and whether or not the effectivity positive factors justify the inherent unpredictability of working with programs that approximate somewhat than calculate.
Lightfield is betting that the trade-off has already shifted in favor of approximation, not less than for the hundreds of thousands of salespeople who at the moment view their CRM as an impediment somewhat than an asset. Whether or not that guess proves appropriate will assist outline the subsequent technology of enterprise software program.
