Artisan launches Ava 2.0: the first autonomous AI BDR, now self-serve

SAN FRANCISCO, May 2026 - Artisan, the AI sales platform backed by $36M in venture funding, today announced the general availability of Ava 2.0, a ground-up rebuild of its AI BDR (Business Development Representative) product. The launch comes with $300 in free credits for all new users, no credit card required, self-service onboarding in under 10 minutes, and a 10x reduction in entry pricing, from $2,500/month to $250/month.

Thousands of companies joined the waitlist ahead of today's release.

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 true AI employee that operates autonomously across the full outbound workflow: identifying and researching prospects, writing hyper-personalized outreach, sending multi-channel sequences across email, social, and phone, 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. Teams that prefer manual review at any stage can enable it, but the default is full autonomy.

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 without human intervention.
300M+ contact database with deep enrichment. Access to over 300 million professionals and 130 million local businesses, with waterfall email and phone enrichment from 15+ providers. 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. 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 volume 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.
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 based on deep research into each individual.
Multi-channel sequences. Email, social, and phone outreach in unified sequences with conditional branching, so Ava adapts the channel mix based on prospect engagement.
Chat with Ava. A conversational AI interface for managing campaigns, getting suggestions, asking questions, and controlling Ava in natural language.
Granular 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.
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. Ava handles 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

Artisan has been at the center of a public conversation about AI and the future of work since placing "Stop hiring humans" billboards across San Francisco and New York.

The billboard is a provocation. The belief underneath it is more nuanced. Artisan's position is that AI should do the work AI can do better, especially the work that was never good for humans in the first place. Cold outbound, in its current shape, breaks people. Average BDR tenure is roughly 14 months. 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.

Ava is built to absorb that work. But Artisan does not automate the whole role. There are inherently human components to sales: a voice on the phone, listening, adjusting, building a moment of connection with a stranger. That is why Artisan built a human dialer alongside Ava. Software does what software is good at. Humans do what humans are good at. The two work next to each other, in the same product, on the same team.

Artisan reports that its customers' GTM teams grow after deploying Ava, not shrink. Customers bring Ava in as a teammate, redirect their sales team to higher-leverage work, expand cold-calling capacity with the dialer, and grow the team alongside it.

Availability

Ava 2.0 is available now at artisan.co with $300 in free credits and no credit card required. Existing V1 customers will be migrated progressively throughout 2026 with support from their Customer Success Manager.

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