Clay Sculpt 2026: What It Means for Inbound and Outbound

Clay used Sculpt 2026, their annual conference in San Francisco on October 8, to announce 3 launches, and 2 of them reach into inbound. Workflows can enrich and route inbound leads. The new Inbound SDR Agent qualifies inbound leads in a voice conversation, then demos the product.

For B2B SaaS marketing and growth leaders who run inbound and outbound together, those 2 launches matter more than the headline agent. Clay's recap says teams now get their edge from "how well they can learn." Both inbound launches feed what they learn back into the ICP and account data that Clay's outbound agent works from.

Understory Agency, which Ali Yildirim and I started in 2021, is an Enterprise Clay Partner and one of the first 5 certified Clay Experts. We build cold and signal-based outbound in Clay and the wider GTM stack. We run it across email and LinkedIn for post-PMF B2B SaaS companies from Series A through enterprise. Understory Agency ranked No. 140 on the 2026 Inc. 5000, with 2,231% 3-year growth. Below is what each launch changes, and where it fits the work Understory Agency already does for clients.

What Clay announced at Sculpt 2026

Clay framed all 3 launches around a "self-learning revenue engine." That's one system that acts on the full picture of a company's customers and market, then learns from the results. The base is Audiences, which Clay says brings CRM records, sales call recordings, and product usage data into "a single GTM data layer." Each launch reads from that layer or writes back to it.

The Clay agent builds campaigns from a goal

The headline launch is the Clay agent, which plans, runs, and improves plays from an outcome a team describes. Clay's example task: "Find me ICP contacts at high-intent health tech companies and build a campaign to prospect into them."

The agent works from Knowledge Hub, which Clay calls "the living record of your ICP, buyer personas, and positioning that guides all agent actions." It sources companies and contacts, saves them to an audience segment, picks the signals, and drafts a sequence for review.

Then it learns. In Clay's example, a campaign books 6 meetings, 5 of them with telehealth companies, and the agent suggests making telehealth a priority segment in the ICP. Every suggestion a team accepts carries into future plays. Sculpt attendees got access on the day, and Clay says users in their early access program get it in the coming weeks.

Understory Agency already builds custom Clay variables around each client's ICP. That ICP is the input the Clay agent now reads from Knowledge Hub, so our clients' agents have a written ICP to plan from on day 1.

Workflows puts complex plays on one canvas

Workflows is a visual canvas where every step can branch, loop, run code, or call an agent. Clay says plays built there run across millions of records. The fastest way to build one, per Clay, is to describe the play in plain language to Clay or to a coding agent through the CLI.

Clay names 3 uses: enrich and route inbound leads, keep the CRM up to date, and research and score target accounts. Results write back to Audiences. Workflows is in beta for all Clay users now, with the launch set for this fall.

Understory Agency builds and runs client plays on our own Clay table, so a team can test Workflows with us without buying their own Clay license.

The Inbound SDR Agent qualifies leads and demos the product

Clay calls the Inbound SDR Agent their "first agentic seller." Beyond qualifying by voice, it demos the actual product in a sandbox, with a use case that fits each lead. It learns to demo from existing call recordings of a company's best sellers.

Clay expects companies with a "hybrid product-led and sales-led motion" to convert more of their product-led inbound leads after the tailored demo. This one is a preview. Clay is signing up pre-beta partners through a waitlist, and the recap gives no launch date.

That hybrid motion is one we already run. For Expensify, Understory Agency added an outbound engine to their product-led growth, and the program has produced 180 to 190 positive replies. Because we run outbound, paid media, LinkedIn content, creative, and RevOps as one team, what an inbound agent learns on a demo can feed every one of those channels.

What Clay walked partners through at partner day

I spent Sculpt week in San Francisco and attended Clay's partner day. Clay is putting agents at the center of the product. The Clay agent is live for Sculpt attendees, and Clay's enterprise GTM agents are in beta.

In beta, those enterprise agents are meant to build dynamic audiences that move through custom sales and marketing funnels as triggers and events fire. Clay is also putting more weight on marketing teams alongside sales, with Audiences and Workflows as the products partners build on. Our team got on Clay early, as one of the first 5 certified Clay Experts. Clay has grown fast, reaching a $1.25B valuation in January 2025. I came home more bullish on where Clay is heading.

Clay showcased Northbeam, an Understory Agency client, as the top case study of the day. Understory Agency runs paid media for Northbeam, and Northbeam reports $2.3M in LinkedIn-sourced pipeline from that program.

The direction Clay described, with marketing and sales plays running from the same triggers and data, matches the model Understory Agency calls Allbound. We have been building toward Allbound since early 2023.

What changes for teams that run inbound and outbound together

Both motions now feed one ICP record in Clay. The outbound agent plans from Knowledge Hub. The SDR agent's conversations suggest changes to the ICP, positioning, or competitive differentiation. Clay says a team can push those changes to all of their campaigns at once.

That means an objection the SDR agent hears on an inbound demo can reshape next week's outbound sequence. It also means a wrong ICP is now wrong in both funnels at the same time.

In Understory Agency's Allbound work, every ad impression, outbound reply, LinkedIn engagement, and meeting lands on the contact record with source and campaign attribution. Today the triggers that move a contact between channels run across several tools we stitch together. Clay promises to bring that orchestration into one place. The new agents also make that record worth more, because they learn from it.

The teams that will get the least from Sculpt run outbound in Clay and inbound somewhere else, on a different ICP. Clay's agents then learn from half the market. Clay says they already power inbound enrichment, routing, and replies for hundreds of companies. Moving inbound into Clay can start with one routing play, as in step 2 below. Once it's there, Understory Agency keeps both funnels on one ICP.

What to do before the rollout reaches your team

Teams running inbound and outbound in Clay should start with the ICP, because every new Clay agent plans from it.

Write your ICP into Knowledge Hub before the agent builds anything. A vague ICP produces vague campaigns at scale.
Test one live play in the Workflows beta. Start with the inbound routing play you already run every day. Keep your current tools until the agents leave beta. Once the play runs in Clay, its results sit in the same data the outbound agent learns from.
Get your sales call recordings into Audiences. Audiences already takes them, so it's a sync you can set up now.
Give one person the final say on ICP changes. With inbound and outbound on one ICP, that person should see both funnels every week.
Join the SDR agent waitlist if you run PLG and sales-led together. It's the one launch with no date yet, and the waitlist is the way in.

Understory Agency can take each of these steps off your plate, from writing the ICP into Clay to building and running the first live play on our own Clay table.

Running outbound in Clay and inbound somewhere else? Book a strategy call with Understory Agency. Our team builds and runs your Clay plays as part of our Allbound work.

FAQ

Will Clay's new agents replace GTM engineers?

Clay's recap says GTM engineers now work with the agents the way software engineers work with coding agents. In Clay's words, they "set the outcome, approve the plan, and let the agents build and iterate" on how the company grows. The engineer still decides what good looks like, and the agent does more of the building.

Did Clay announce pricing for the Sculpt 2026 launches?

Clay's Sculpt 2026 recap lists no pricing for the agent builder, Workflows, or the Inbound SDR Agent.

How many people attended Sculpt 2026?

Clay says Sculpt 2026 drew 2,000 attendees from 30 countries to San Francisco on October 8.

How does Understory Agency use Clay in outbound?

Understory Agency enriches every prospect through a custom waterfall, with multiple data sources stacked for accuracy, and double-validates every email before sending. AI personalization runs against custom variables we build for each client's ICP. Understory Agency has worked with 150+ B2B companies from Series A through enterprise.