DeepMind Founders Close $20M for Sales Execution Platform
Airspeed, the AI sales execution platform built by ex-DeepMind scientists Adam Liska and Devang Agrawal, raised $20M Series A led by DN Capital. Atlassian Ventures, Vi Partners, and Framework Venture Partners joined the round. Total funding now sits above $25M.
The company launched in 2022 as Glyphic, rebranded to Airspeed in May 2026, and hit 200 customers across 20 countries. The platform uses autonomous agents to handle post-call execution: CRM updates, follow-up emails, risk flags, business cases. Liska calls it the execution gap, the space between knowing what to do after a call and actually doing it.
"The single most expensive sentence in sales is 'I'll follow up on that,'" Liska said. The promise sounds responsible, but the follow-up sinks in the inbox, urgency dies, and the deal still shows live in the CRM. Managers forecast it. CROs present it to the board. Nobody executed.
What This Means for Sales Teams
Airspeed sits in the sales execution category, competing with tools like Outreach and Salesloft but focused on autonomous agents rather than rep-triggered workflows. The pitch: automate research, CRM hygiene, follow-up generation, and business case creation. Let reps focus on the call, not the cleanup.
Liska left DeepMind's Gemini team pre-ChatGPT, betting that AI would flatten GTM orgs by squeezing middle management, not frontline reps. Same pattern as engineering: companies are not cutting engineers, they are slowing junior hiring and keeping the team that executes. Orgs get flatter, reps get stronger, the layer above them gets thinner.
The company scaled early pipeline through in-person events: dinners, breakfasts, hackathons. At the half-year mark, 70% of deals traced back to offline touchpoints. Cold outbound still works, but face-to-face shortens cycles and lifts win rates.
No ANZ-specific headcount or office presence disclosed, but Atlassian Ventures' involvement suggests potential regional relevance. Comp data, team size, and quota details not public. The company remains private with no acquisitions reported.
What Sales Leaders Should Watch
The execution platform category is splitting: sales engagement tools (Outreach, Salesloft) focus on rep productivity, while execution platforms (Airspeed) focus on autonomous post-call workflows. The line between them is blurring as every platform adds AI features.
Liska's take: AI won't replace reps, but it will change what reps do. Automate research, CRM updates, follow-ups. Keep reps on calls, not admin. The bet is that GTM teams will pay for execution, not just engagement.
Worth noting: Airspeed does not lock into a single AI model. The team rebuilds workflows as frontier models improve. That matters when OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google ship updates every quarter. The platform you buy today might run on different models six months from now.