- Spiich, a Swedish startup that makes sales human, raised € 3 million in its seed funding round in just two weeks, with Ugly Duckling Ventures as the lead investor.
- In practice, Spiich’s agents locate the companies and messages they want to use, gather background details on the prospects, prepare their follow-up emails, record the results in the CRM, update the sales pipeline, and automatically arrange the next task
- The Stockholm-based startup has grown from having two co-founders to an eight-member team within just 10 months.
Since he began working on Spiich a year ago, Johan Torssell has spoken to about 2,500 to 3,000 sales representatives and discovered that although they enjoy helping customers, they are less enthusiastic about the other aspects of their jobs.
The discrepancy between what salespeople would like to do and the tasks they actually carry out was the reason for Spiich’s most recent €3 million seed financing.
Ugly Duckling Ventures, based in Copenhagen, led the financing, with Alliance VC and Cherry Ventures joining as new investors. Ampli Ventures, which led the Spiich €600,000 pre-seed round in November 2025, also participated in this round. Spiich’s total funds thus amount to €3.6 million.
“We received the initial term sheet from Ugly Duckling Ventures after two weeks,” Torssell says. Additionally, angel investors from Lovable, Neo4j, Tandem Health, and OpenAI made investments.
Johan Torssell, the company’s chief executive, and Dennis Hadzialic, the chief technology officer, set up Spiich in Stockholm in June 2025. “We are the system of intelligence and the system of action,” says Torssell to Tech Funding News.
In practice, Spiich’s agents locate the companies and messages they want to use, gather background details on the prospects, prepare their follow-up emails, record the results in the CRM, update the sales pipeline, and automatically arrange the next task.
“You must review the message before sending it, but most of the work, typically the kind of tasks that salespeople don’t like, is carried out by Spiich,” Torssell explains.
Market competition
Speaking about competition, Torssell notes, “Our approach is the exact opposite of companies such as 11x or Artisan who are constantly promoting the idea that you shouldn’t hire humans but instead hire AI agents for sales.”
He adds, “We completely disagree with that idea. We know that conversion rates are very poor and that people do not buy from agents. People buy from people.”
Artisan raised $25 million in its Series A funding in April 2025 as part of its ‘Stop Hiring Humans’ campaign, while 11x achieved a $350 million valuation following its $50 million Series B round that same year.
Still, Torssell identifies Rox and Monaco as Spiich’s main competitors, with Rox having launched with $50 million from Sequoia and General Catalyst and Monaco being a platform supported by Benchmark which in May 2026 raised $50 million in its Series B and has so far raised over $85 million, both of the American companies employing the same end-to-end, agent-driven method as Spiich.
The rapid growth
Up to February 2026, Spiich consisted only of Torssell and Hadzialic. By summer, the team had increased to four members and now numbers eight, with further hires intended. The company currently provides its services to more than 50 customers in over 15 countries, among them NORNORM, ProfitMetrics, Zaver, Airmee, Rebaba and Epiminds, and has offices in Panama, Colombia, Brazil and the Nordics.
Almost all of the company’s growth has been due to word of mouth. Torssell has not disclosed the revenue figures, stating that they will be looked at “once we have $100 million ARR”, but he does report month-on-month growth of over 100% in early 2026 and a net revenue retention of 160%.
Louise Lachmann, a general partner at Ugly Duckling Ventures, who had previously founded Mono Solutions and sold it to Bauer Media Group in 2019, said: “Every sales tool of the last decade promised to give reps their time back, and most of them delivered another system to keep updated. Spiich is the first we’ve seen that does the non-selling work rather
than assisting with it.”
Going against the market trend
Although the forecasts indicate that the AI SDR market will grow from $5.81 billion in 2026 to $17.58 billion by 2030, Torssell still anticipates a return to more in-person sales. Most of the investments are directed towards the contrary trend, and Spiich’s funding occurs in a particularly strong year for AI investment in the Nordic region, which also saw the launch of a €21 million micro fund for early-stage Nordic AI founders.
No matter which approach is adopted, both models now benefit from substantial financial support. Spiich relies on the idea that customers still value personal interaction.
