Artisan launches Ava 2.0, the autonomous AI BDR built for enterprise

SAN FRANCISCO, May 2026 (updated July 2026) - Artisan, the enterprise AI sales platform backed by $36M in venture funding, today launched Ava 2.0, a ground-up rebuild of its AI BDR (Business Development Representative) product. Thousands of companies joined the waitlist ahead of today's release.

Ava doesn't replace your reps, she replaces their busywork. She books the meetings and your reps close them.

What makes Ava 2.0 autonomous

Most AI sales tools are copilots. They assist with individual tasks but still need a human driving. Ava 2.0 is the first AI BDR to run the full outbound workflow end to end: identifying and researching prospects, writing outreach 1:1 for every lead based on deep research (never one template blasted at scale), running email sequences, queuing warm leads for your reps in the dialer, handling replies including objections and questions, and booking meetings directly on your team's calendar.

Thousands of prospect conversations run in parallel, with continuous multivariate optimization improving conversion rates across every element of every message. Ava monitors intent signals like funding rounds, leadership changes, new hires, and tech stack changes to prioritize the right prospects at the right time.

And you decide what runs on its own. Approval gates are available at every stage of Ava's workflow, and escalation rules decide when a human gets pulled in. Warm leads land with your reps in the dialer, and meetings land on their calendars. Your team can start with approvals on, and expand Ava's autonomy as results come in.

Built for enterprise scale

Ava 2.0 was built to pass procurement, not just a demo. Artisan is SOC 2 Type II audited, with single sign-on, role-based access control, team and workspace permissions, and guardrails governing what Ava can say and send. The Artisan trust center at trust.artisan.co carries the full documentation, from the latest pentest report to the DPA and subprocessor list.

And it can run centrally. One ops team launches campaigns for the whole org while Ava sends on behalf of each rep, routes meetings and call tasks to the right owner, and rolls every conversation and number up into one view. Reps don't have to manage tooling. They take conversations.

Your CRM stays yours. Run the integration read-only and pull CRM data into campaigns without pushing anything back, or control exactly what Ava writes with field-level export controls and account owner-to-sender mapping. Nothing syncs that you haven't allowed. And Ava knows who not to touch: global do-not-contact and suppression lists, synced straight from your CRM, keep existing customers and in-flight deals out of every campaign, enforced at both enrollment and send.

Compliance is built in: GDPR-ready outbound for the EU and UK, with automated Article 14 disclosures on first contact and one-click unsubscribe honoring Article 21 objection rights, plus sensible per-mailbox limits, bounce testing before every send, and configurable send windows.

Revenue teams at SumUp, CookUnity, Quora, and Informa run on Artisan, alongside some of the world's largest technology companies we can't name yet. The largest single deployment runs Ava across more than 1,000 reps.

Consolidate your stack, or run Ava alongside it

Most outbound stacks are five contracts deep: a data provider, an enrichment layer, a sequencer, a dialer, and an intent tool, plus the glue holding them all together. Everything Ava needs is built in, and many customers who came to Artisan from those stacks have retired the point solutions and consolidated outbound onto one platform.

The case for consolidating is the one CROs already know: one contract instead of five, one security review instead of five, no brittle integrations dropping leads between tools, and full-funnel reporting in one place, from first touch to booked meeting.

Not ready to consolidate? Ava also runs alongside the stack you have. She plugs into your CRM, calendar, email, data warehouse, and more. Nothing gets ripped out on day one and you pick the pace.

Core capabilities

Autonomous reply handling and meeting booking. Ava manages objections, answers questions, and adjusts around out-of-office replies. When a prospect is ready, Ava books the meeting on your rep's calendar. Approval gates and escalation rules are available at every stage when your team wants review before anything goes out.

250M+ contact database with deep enrichment. Access to over 250 million verified B2B contacts and 130 million local businesses, with waterfall email and phone enrichment across 22+ data sources. Custom AI enrichment layers in data like podcast appearances, tech stack, and recent funding.

Built-in dialer. A native dialer puts reps on the phone with warm leads, with call tasks auto-triggered by engagement, parallel dialing so reps spend their minutes talking instead of dialing, and Blitz rooms: a live salesfloor where the team dials together and managers listen in. AI handles the volume work, humans handle the conversations.

Self-optimizing messaging. Continuous multivariate testing across subject lines, body copy, CTAs, and send times. Ava automatically shifts effort toward what converts.

Dedicated campaign types. Purpose-built workflows for cold outbound, warm outbound, cross-sell/upsell, and signals-triggered campaigns, each with tailored data sources and messaging. A campaign library of proven plays gives teams a head start.

Intent signals. Ava monitors signals like funding rounds, leadership changes, new hires, investor activity, and tech stack changes, then automatically enrolls matching prospects into campaigns with personalized outreach. Define custom signals for the triggers unique to your market.

Multi-channel sequences. Email and dialer call steps in unified sequences with conditional branching, plus rep tasks for the touches that should stay human.

Chat with Ava. A conversational AI interface for managing campaigns, getting suggestions, asking questions, and controlling Ava in natural language.

Slack notifications. Replies, booked meetings, and campaign events pushed to the channels or DMs your team already works in.

Enterprise-grade CRM integration. Salesforce and HubSpot sync with fine-grained export controls, the ability to pull CRM data into campaigns without pushing back, account owner-to-sender mapping, and CRM views as campaign data sources.

Teams, roles, and guardrails. Role-based access control, workspace-level permissions, and guardrails that govern what Ava can say and where she can act.

Website visitor identification. Person-level identification in the US and company-level identification globally, with auto-enrollment into campaigns.

ML-based lead scoring. Internal scoring model prioritizes the highest-propensity leads so Ava focuses effort where it is most likely to convert.

Enhanced analytics. A five-tab analytics suite covering overview, messaging, deliverability, dialer, and credits, with full-funnel reporting and AI-generated insights.

What changed from V1

Ava 2.0 is a ground-up rebuild of the Artisan platform. Everything customers relied on is preserved and significantly improved, with major new capabilities layered on top.

The defining change is that Ava now does the work, not just the prep. In V1, Ava could find leads and send sequences, but a human still reviewed every reply, booked every meeting, and managed campaign performance manually. In V2, that entire loop closes on its own, with human approval gates wherever your team wants them. Ava can handle the conversation from first touch to booked meeting.

V2 also makes Ava truly multi-channel for the first time with a built-in dialer, adds dedicated campaign types for cold outbound, warm outbound, cross-sell/upsell, and signals-triggered workflows, and introduces a conversational AI interface that lets teams manage Ava in natural language instead of clicking through configuration screens. An ML-based lead scoring system now prioritizes the highest-propensity leads, and a dedicated Signals page tracks funding rounds, new leadership, first hires, investor activity, and tech stack changes, replacing V1's basic fundraise trigger. A new credit-based pricing model means teams pay only for what they use.

The bigger bet

Ava does everything your reps hate about their jobs.

Cold outbound, in its current shape, breaks people. Average BDR tenure is roughly 14 months, and burnout is the top reason people leave. The job is to send a slightly tweaked version of the same message hundreds of times a week, get ignored most of the time, and chase a quota that goes up every quarter. Then there's the logging, the tracking, the data entry. Somewhere in your company right now, a six-figure salary is updating a CRM field.

Artisan's position is simple: AI should do the work AI can do better, especially the work that was never good for humans in the first place. So Ava absorbs the busywork. But Artisan does not automate the whole role, because there are inherently human components to sales: a voice on the phone, listening, reading the moment, building a connection with a stranger. That is why Artisan built a dialer that puts humans on the phone. Software does what software is good at, while humans do what humans are good at. The two work next to each other, in the same product, on the same team.

The economics follow. Companies shouldn't use AI to get the same output from a fifth of the team. They should get five times the output from the team they already have. Pipeline targets go up every year but headcount budgets don't, and Ava helps companies close the gap.

The result: GTM teams grow after deploying Ava, not shrink. They bring Ava in as a teammate, redirect reps to higher-leverage work, expand calling capacity with the dialer, and hire alongside her.

Availability

Ava 2.0 is available now, with pricing custom to your team, your motion, and your volume. Enterprise deployments come white glove: a dedicated forward-deployed strategist (ex-McKinsey) owns your rollout from migration to first meetings booked, with security review support throughout. After launch, enterprise plans carry a dedicated CSM with strategic support, custom SLAs, and a shared Slack channel with the Artisan team. Existing V1 customers will be migrated progressively throughout 2026 with support from their Customer Success Manager. Book a demo at artisan.co.

Media contact: press@artisan.co Website: artisan.co