APTSell Secures Millions in Funding from DCM Ventures, Aims to Be AI - Powered Chief Sales Officer

Structurize, quantify, and agentize sales rules and tasks.

Text by | Wu Sijin

Edited by | Deng Yongyi

01 One-sentence Introduction

Beijing Zhizhen Zhihe Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in 2024. Its product, "APTSell" (AI Power To Sales), aims to become the AI version of the CSO (Chief Sales Officer).

In simple terms, APTSell is a combined Agent. By integrating and visualizing the data of the entire sales process, it generates management decisions and execution suggestions, with the expectation of positively promoting sales efficiency and performance improvement, and reducing the dependence on traditional sales management experience and positions in the reverse direction.

Recently, APTSell announced that it has completed a seed-round financing of millions of dollars exclusively invested by DCM Ventures. The funds will be used for the R & D and iteration of product technology, and to actively carry out in-depth commercial cooperation. Previously, APTSell also received angel-round investment from Atom Capital.

02 Team Introduction

Founder Zhao Lei worked at Oracle for 10 years, from front-line sales to the general manager of the North Region. He built a large-scale industry sales system, achieving an income of 300 million in a single industry in 3 years, with a YoY > 150%. After that, Zhao Lei served as the sales VP at Microstep Online, generating 300 million in revenue for the company in 5 years. Subsequently, he provided sales consulting services for more than 50 companies such as PingCAP and Baiyang Pharmaceutical, and published the book "From Chaos to Scalability", dissecting how to build a replicable growth system.
Co-founder Zhu Zhenbo has worked at IBM China Research Institute, Microsoft Enterprise and Cloud Division, and Microsoft Asia Research Institute, managing a multinational team of more than 50 people. His main research direction is the research and implementation of machine learning. After that, he founded the enterprise-level supply chain platform Yijian Tiens and served as the CEO. Later, it was acquired by Longfor Group and he became a partner of Longfor Group. Other professional experiences include being a technology partner at FlowGPT and a technology consultant at PixVerse.

03 Product and Business

Almost all enterprises are exploring how to use AI to reshape the business process. However, what enterprise owners are most concerned about may be the sales link closest to money.

In the past, the sales management path was: checking sales leads and progress on the CRM, restoring the sales process on the BI, and the sales leader deciding what to do next and how to do it.

In this process, sales managers are heavily relied on, and they are non - replicable, unpredictable, and non - scalable.

Now, AI can integrate the sales process data scattered on various IM platforms, and replace front - line sales to complete repetitive tasks such as daily, weekly, monthly reports, and project reviews. AI can also analyze and predict the sales process based on the overall data, and give decision - making suggestions. It can even complete some simple and standardized task executions after receiving instructions.

AI has not changed the sales process and the enterprise's sales rules. It just re - splits the tasks in the process. Part of them are completed by AI, and part of them are still decided by humans.

The product logic of APTSell is to structure, digitize, and Agentize such sales rules and tasks.

Specifically, it tries to connect sales data collection, project diagnosis, management review, and experience precipitation into a continuously optimized sales management closed - loop through four types of collaborative Agents:

Behavior Agent: Responsible for integrating multi - channel and multi - modal sales behavior data, including CRM records, IM communication records, meeting minutes, etc., and automatically conducting quality inspections on the integrity and authenticity of the data, solving the problems of scattered and opaque sales process data in the past.
Project Agent: Continuously analyzes a single customer or business opportunity based on historical and real - time data, identifies progress, risks, and early warnings, and provides predictions and suggestions for the next action.
Review Agent: Aims at the top sales managers, automatically generates team reports, identifies abnormal projects, risks, suggestions, and stage - by - stage reviews. In this link, it replaces part of the management work that originally relied on manual summarization and experience judgment.
Best Practice Agent: Its core goal is to automatically learn and extract high - conversion paths and best practices by analyzing all data, empower the sales team in the reverse direction, realize the automatic evolution of the combat strategy, and then guide the front - line sales execution in the reverse direction.

Zhao Lei, the founder of APTSell, told 36Kr that the company has entered the PMF verification stage.

Since the end of 2025, APTSell has signed contracts with more than 20 customers. Half of them are recommended by old customers, and half are recommended by integrators (such as Feishu). Currently, the customers are mainly concentrated in the pharmaceutical, high - tech (including advanced manufacturing), and enterprise service industries. These enterprises have a sales team of 30 - 50 people, with an annual revenue of 100 - 200 million. They are facing growth bottlenecks and have a strong demand for sales process management.

To judge the real value of a product, we need to look at the actual feedback from users. In the case of APTSell, assuming it is an analysis + decision - making system, where AI gives suggestions (What to do), AI generates actions (How to do), and AI automatically executes (Agent), the technology is feasible. But can it complete the business closed - loop? We need to see if enterprises dare to let AI directly affect the deal, whether the responsibility can be attributed, and whether the responsibility chain is established.

Zhao Lei responded to this question with data. He introduced that for customers using APTSell, on average, the deal conversion rate has increased by 10 - 15%, the sales efficiency has increased by about 30%, and the management time has been reduced by about 50%.

APTSell is priced comprehensively based on the size of the sales team in use and the total amount of tokens consumed. For example, for a 50 - person sales team, the annual fee is about 250,000 - 300,000 RMB.

The company currently has a team of more than ten people. More than 90% of the code is generated by AI, which is a typical AI Native operation mode. Currently, the company is close to breaking even, and it is basically certain that it will achieve considerable profits within the year.

APTSell is not an out - of - the - box product. There is a process of consultation first and then deployment. After the customer places an order, the average online period is about 10 working days. In this process, it is necessary to conduct interviews and training on the enterprise's sales rules for the using team. More than 90% of the deployment work is completed by the Agent.

04 Founder's Thoughts

APTSell is positioned as the digital avatar of sales executives, aiming to transform the sales management system from relying on personal experience to relying on system logic, and realize the migration from human - governance to AI Native.
The core of APTSell is to connect two major growth factors. One is to improve sales efficiency (human efficiency) through the Agent, and the other is to improve the conversion rate through the management decision - making closed - loop, so as to achieve performance growth with a reduced number of sales management personnel.
The core reason why APTSell can help enterprises with sales management and improve the conversion rate is the two things the Agent does. The first thing is to help people manage the lower limit (the enterprise's sales rules), and use optimization thinking to replace human thinking. The second thing is that with the continuous update and accumulation of sales data, it can continuously learn and then improve the management lower limit.
Full - process closed - loop management means that the system has three major capabilities: empowerment (How to do), supervision (real - time evaluation of progress), and management closed - loop (from contact to performance achievement), aiming to replace the repetitive labor of middle - level managers.
APTSell has set the boundaries of human - machine collaboration: AI is responsible for handling structured thinking, data analysis, and repetitive labor (such as daily and weekly reports), while the emotional connection between people, trust building, and in - depth strategic thinking are still the responsibility of humans.

05 Interview Notes

The business process closest to money is also closest to the budget.

In the United States, this may be a good business. The CRM system centered on Salesforce is responsible for unifying the sales data and process entry. Independent analysis - layer tools such as Gong and Clari are responsible for sales behavior identification, analysis, and revenue prediction. AI capabilities are more embedded in the existing systems as enhancement modules. The overall division of labor is relatively clear, and the boundaries are distinct, which allows professional tools to have room for free growth at their respective levels.

However, the Chinese market has obvious regional characteristics: the CRM and SaaS markets are very fragmented, and the data quality is poor. The entry of sales dialogue data is occupied by IM platforms. It is difficult for independent start - up companies to build a complete system - level product. They mostly look for niche cuts on existing platforms or enter in the form of AI tools.

More importantly, Chinese enterprise owners prefer to pay directly for the revenue - generating results, that is, the revenue - sharing model, which is not friendly to enterprises in the start - up stage.

However, for products like APTSell, as long as the specific business scenarios they enter are wide enough, painful enough, and truly exist, there is no lack of business prospects.

AI has changed the product, the organization, and the billing method, but the essence of business has not changed.

06 What the Investor Says

Lin Xinhe, a managing partner at DCM Ventures, said: "We have been continuously paying attention to the new opportunities brought by the AI paradigm shift. We have seen the focus and enthusiasm of the APTSell team in the AI Native field, enabling technological innovation to be translated into solid and reliable delivery capabilities. Through years of accumulated commercial practical experience, they continuously create value for customers and the APTSell team itself, driving the growth engine."