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Aomni, an AI platform that helps sales teams conduct deep research on potential customers, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Decibel, with participation from Sancus Ventures and Ride Home Fund. The company is taking a distinctly human-centric approach in a market saturated with AI tools focused on automating away sales roles.
Founded by David Zhang, whose journey from a small Chinese village to launching satellites into space mirrors the ambitious scope of his latest venture, Aomni uses AI agents to transform how enterprise sales teams research and engage with prospects.
“If you look at a typical sales rep, they only spend 30-40% of their time in front of customers,” Zhang told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview. “The other 60-70% is spent on tedious knowledge work — filling out CRM systems, lead prospecting, and account research. Our goal is to make all that tedious work disappear.”
AI agents that research in real time, giving sales teams an edge
Unlike traditional sales intelligence platforms that rely on static databases and basic firmographic data, Aomni deploys AI agents that conduct real-time web research across dozens of data sources. When researching a prospect, the system spins up multiple Chrome browsers to actively browse recent company announcements, social media posts, product launches and other public information.
“Current sales research products are based more on a static database,” Zhang told VentureBeat. “They’re great if you want to find companies that have raised more than $10 million or have 200 employees, but that’s very high-level. Because we do agenda research with real-time web browsing, you can ask very specific questions.”
Early customers include major technology companies like Nvidia and AMD, which are using Aomni to navigate the rapidly evolving AI chip market. The platform has helped sales teams improve close rates by up to 40% by enabling more targeted and informed customer conversations.
Why investors are betting big on AI that supports — not replaces — sales teams
Jessica Leao, partner at Decibel, said the firm was drawn to Aomni’s human-centric vision in a market dominated by automation plays. “So many AI sales tools focus on replacing reps, but sales will always be human-driven at the highest levels,” she explained. “What I love about Aomni is that the team has a unique combination of deep technical expertise and a compelling vision for the future that is unapologetically team human.”
The technology builds on recent advances in large language models and AI agents, but Zhang emphasizes that the key innovation is in the orchestration layer rather than the underlying models. Aomni combines multiple AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and AI21 Labs, with proprietary systems for parsing company-specific information.
Zhang’s approach appears prescient given the recent explosion of interest in AI agents. An open-source version of Aomni’s research system, released shortly after OpenAI’s similar Deep Research feature, garnered over 8,000 GitHub stars within days.
Introducing deep-research – my own open source implementation of OpenAI’s new Deep Research agent. Get the same capability without paying $200.
You can even tweak the behavior of the agent with adjustable breadth and depth.
Run it for 5 min or 5 hours, it’ll auto adjust. pic.twitter.com/SF8km7ybJ2
— David (@dzhng) February 4, 2025
The future of sales AI: smarter, faster and more human-centric
Looking ahead, Zhang plans to expand Aomni’s capabilities with multimodal features that will allow sales teams to interact with the AI through voice and images. The company is betting heavily on continued improvements in AI model performance and declining compute costs.
“Our development philosophy is: Don’t bet against the model,” Zhang said. “A lot of companies spend time on optimization and guardrails and cost savings. Then in two months, there’s a new model that’s half the price and all that work becomes useless.”
The funding will help Aomni pursue its vision of turning every sales representative into a top performer through AI augmentation rather than replacement. In a field as relationship-driven as enterprise sales, Zhang believes the future belongs to solutions that enhance rather than automate human capabilities.
“Ultimately, sales is still about solving customer problems and building relationships,” Zhang said. “That’s not going to change in 10 years. You can add as much automation as you want on top, but those fundamentals remain the same.”
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