New York – October 14, 2026 -- Othello, an applied AI lab building models for live sales calls, has raised $8 million in seed funding from a16z speedrun, Owl Capital and Long Journey Ventures, and says its coaching software is already deployed at more than 50 large enterprises.
Angel roster includes founders of DoorDash, Ripple and Hugging Face
Angel investors in the round include DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, Sentry co-founder David Cramer and Writer co-founder Waseem AlShikh. Axonius co-founder Dean Sysman, Deel co-founders Alex and Philippe Bouaziz and TransDigm CEO Kevin Stein also participated.
Hamlet model delivers live suggestions in under 500 milliseconds
Othello runs on Hamlet, a proprietary model built for live sales calls. A desktop app launches when a call begins and displays pop-ups in any online meeting without joining as a participant.
During a call, the software prompts reps on:
- which discovery question to ask next
- which MEDDPICC, Challenger or playbook steps they have missed
- how to answer product and technical questions and handle objections
- how to stand out against competitors
- which case study to share
- when the buyer is ready to move forward
Co-founder and CEO Jared Zelman argues that existing sales technology clusters before and after the conversation, leaving the call itself unaddressed, and that real-time recommendations with full deal context require purpose-trained AI models.
Customers include Microsoft, Capital One and Lyft
Othello is deployed at more than 50 large enterprises, including several Fortune 500 companies, and adds several new multinational enterprise customers weekly. Named customers are Microsoft, Capital One and Lyft, alongside a top 10 accounting firm and a top 10 asset manager.
The company serves insurance, accounting, financial services, asset management, enterprise software, cybersecurity, healthcare, manufacturing and professional services.
Licensed reps adopt within a week and use it on 95% of calls
Licensed reps adopt Othello within a week of downloading the app, and reps use it on 95% or more of their calls, according to the company.
The launch lands as Gartner predicts that by 2028, 60% of B2B seller work will be executed through conversational user interfaces, up from less than 5% in 2023.