AI startup Leadbay, which develops an artificial intelligence-based platform for customer discovery and qualification, has raised $4.3 million in a seed funding round. For Ukraine’s technology ecosystem, the deal is notable for the participation of Ukrainian venture fund Roosh Ventures, which became one of the company’s earliest investors and backed it at an early stage of development.
The round also included international accelerator Y Combinator, Rebel Ventures, Inovexus Ventures, TS Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Bright Ventures by Bright Data, Transpose Platform, and Deel Ventures. Among the investors are founders and top executives from well-known fintech and HR-tech companies including Deel, Gusto, and Pennylane.
Leadbay is building a B2B AI platform for identifying potential customers among small and medium-sized businesses. The company is focused on the SMB segment, which, according to its developers, remains “invisible” to most modern sales tools such as Apollo, ZoomInfo, or LinkedIn. This primarily refers to small offline businesses that have little digital footprint and limited online presence.
Leadbay co-founder and CTO Milan Stankovic said that data on small and medium-sized businesses remains fragmented and unstructured in many countries, prompting the company to develop its own inference model for analyzing local economies. According to him, the model works like a top-performing sales manager and is capable of finding and qualifying customers even with minimal available data.
The platform uses AI agents that automatically analyze information and identify potential clients. Users can evaluate the leads found through like/dislike actions or contact companies directly, while the model continues learning from these interactions. Leadbay says this approach enables customer discovery to scale at a low cost.
The startup will use the $4.3 million raised to expand its presence in the US market and scale its go-to-market team there. In addition, the funds will support further development of the AI model within the framework of a research partnership with Sorbonne University, as well as the expansion of the engineering team.
For Ukraine’s venture market, the deal is important as an example of local capital participating in international AI projects. Andrii Tymovskyi, Principal at Ukrainian fund Roosh Ventures, said the fund became Leadbay’s first venture investor and backed the team before its entry into Y Combinator and before its expansion in the United States. According to him, the founders were building a global company from the outset and targeted the offline SMB market, which remains underserved by modern technology solutions.
