Berlin-based Zell, an AI startup automating sales management workflows, has raised €500k in order to accelerate commercial growth, expand the team with new hires across tech and sales, further develop its AI engine, and drive expansion across Europe beyond the DACH and Italian markets.
The round was co-led by P3 Ventures, SkyDeck Europe, UC Berkeley SkyDeck, Lendlease, and Cariplo Factory accelerator, alongside a group of international angel investors and venture capital firms, including Mamba Ventures, Nicola Pivaro, Flavio Di Palo, Pietro Tansini, Thomas Hunziker, Gabriele Sidoti, and Ricardo Waller.
“The data is there. The tools are there. The problem is that no one actually acts on that data,” says Alberto Garagnani, CEO and co-founder of Zell. “We built Zell to close this gap: a system that doesn’t just analyse performance, but actively improves it.”
In broader 2025–2026 funding activity of AI-driven sales, CRM and adjacent workflow automation, Zell’s €500k round sits alongside a number of larger financings in related categories.
These include Donna, the Ghent-based Belgian startup that raised €4.1 million to scale its AI assistant for field sales teams; Spiich Labs, based in Stockholm, which secured €600k to automate CRM admin for B2B sales teams; Genesy, the Barcelona-based company that raised €5 million to grow its team and scale its AI-powered B2B sales platform in key markets; and Plato, the Berlin-based startup that secured €12.2 million to automate sales, quoting and ERP workflows in distribution.
Taken together, those comparable rounds amount to almost €22 million, or about €22.4 million including Zell’s raise, indicating continued investor interest in software that reduces manual commercial work and turns sales data into operational action.
“Zell tackled one of the most persistent blind spots in B2B sales: the gap between what managers believe is happening in calls and what actually is. Through SkyDeck Europe, the team proved that AI-native coaching grounded in real behavioral data can move the needle where it matters – rep performance. This round confirms they’ve built something sales teams genuinely need,” adds Andrea Beretta, Senior Director, Startup Operations & Investments of Cariplo Factory.
Founded in 2024 by CEO Alberto Garagnani and CTO Moritz Beck, Zell was born from the shared frustration: the inability of companies to effectively train their sales teams. Alberto experienced firsthand the challenges of training sales teams, while Moritz worked years in sales before becoming an engineer and approaching the problem from a technical perspective, building AI-powered training platforms.
According to the company, today’s sales technology stack is largely divided between CRMs, which store data, and conversation intelligence tools, which generate insights. Zell introduces a new layer that turns those insights into action, automating the work of the sales manager.
The platform analyses sales calls, identifies key signals, generates personalised coaching plans – including AI-powered role plays – and tracks performance improvements over time. As a result, coaching time can be reportedly reduced by up to 80%, allowing managers to support each sales rep in just a few minutes.
“The way reps work, the way managers lead, the way performance gets measured: sales teams look very different today than they did two years ago. Zell gives them the visibility and coaching infrastructure to keep up and continuously improve. Alberto and Moritz are the right people to own this category,” adds Umberto Liaci, General Partner, P3 Ventures.
According to data provided by the company, the global sales management market is estimated at over €427 billion ($500 billion) and is undergoing a structural transformation driven by AI. In this context, Zell aims to define a new category: AI-native systems capable of covering the entire cycle, from diagnosis to correction to continuous improvement.
Zell says they have already validated their model with enterprise and scale-up clients across countries (US, Germany, Italy and Spain), including Pack, Revenue Excellence Partners, Commerciali Digitali, Ladle and HomeTown.
“We are building a system that executes the operational work of a sales manager, while leaving strategic control in the hands of the manager,” adds Moritz Beck, CTO and co-founder. “The goal is to make scalable something that still relies too heavily on human effort.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/04/germanys-zell-raises-e500k-to-automate-sales-management-workflows-with-ai/
