New York-based AI sales technology startup Othello has raised $8 million in seed funding in a round led by a16z Speedrun and Owl Capital, with participation from Long Journey Ventures.
The round also included angel investments from DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, Sentry co-founder David Cramer, Writer co-founder Waseem AlShikh, Axonius co-founder Dean Sysman, Deel co-founders Alex and Philippe Bouaziz, and TransDigm CEO Kevin Stein.
Founded in 2025 by Jared Zelman and Raphael Assor, Othello develops AI-powered software that provides sales representatives with guidance during live customer conversations. Zelman serves as CEO, while Assor is CTO. The company focuses on helping enterprise sales teams apply sales methodologies, respond to customer questions and access relevant information while calls are underway.
Othello’s technology is powered by Hamlet, its proprietary AI model designed for real-time sales conversations. According to the company, the model generates contextual recommendations in under 500 milliseconds, allowing sales representatives to receive guidance without interrupting ongoing discussions.
The platform operates through a desktop application that displays suggestions during online meetings without joining as a separate participant. Its capabilities include recommending discovery questions, identifying missed sales playbook steps, helping representatives address objections, providing product information and suggesting relevant case studies.
Othello supports established sales methodologies such as MEDDPICC and Challenger, enabling organizations to incorporate their existing sales processes into live coaching.
The company reports that its technology has been deployed at more than 50 large enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies. Its named customers include Microsoft, Capital One and Lyft. Othello serves sales teams across industries including financial services, insurance, enterprise software, cybersecurity, healthcare and manufacturing.
Othello plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering team and further develop its AI sales coaching capabilities, including more personalized guidance based on individual sales representatives’ performance.
