While most AI sales tools focus on cold calling and lead generation, Amanda Kahlow is tackling a different problem: converting interested buyers into paying customers. Her stealth startup 1Mind has just emerged with a $30 million Series A led by Battery Ventures, bringing total funding to $40 million.

The company's AI agent, Mindy, specialises in inbound sales; handling everything from product demos to enterprise negotiations and customer onboarding. And unlike typical pilot projects, 1Mind has already signed over 30 enterprise customers including HubSpot, LinkedIn, and New Relic to six-figure annual contracts.

Why inbound, not outbound?

Kahlow, who previously founded 6Sense (which became a unicorn before she stepped down in 2020), is deliberately avoiding the crowded AI cold-outreach market. "I'm not playing in outbound," she told TechCrunch. "That's a crowded market where even my previous firm offers agents."

Her reasoning is sound: sales teams are drowning in leads but struggling to convert them efficiently. Traditional sales engineering roles cost companies over $150,000 annually per hire, yet many enterprise buyers actually prefer self-service experiences. Kahlow spotted the gap and spent the past year quietly building a solution.

How Mindy works

The AI agent runs on a combination of OpenAI and Google Gemini models but uses what Kahlow calls "deterministic AI" to prevent hallucinations – absolutely critical when handling enterprise sales conversations worth potentially millions.

"Once the agent ingests corporate sales materials, it should recite that info without deviation," Kahlow explained. If Mindy is unsure about something, she is programmed to confess rather than invent answers. In a sector where AI hallucinations continue to be a major issue, this is an honest and refreshing approach.

Neeraj Agrawal, who works at the investment firm, Battery Ventures, met Mindy while doing due diligence. "We had access to the data room and we asked a lot of questions about case studies with the assistance of Mindy," he said. The setting of the interaction was so finely crafted that the users got involved in lengthy dialogues and some of them even lost track of the fact that they were conversing with an AI.

Bold demonstrations

Kahlow took confidence in her technology a step further by creating an AI avatar of herself for investor pitches. That avatar is still live on her LinkedIn page, handling questions about 1Mind's products and her experience as a woman in tech. It's both a bold product demonstration and classic Kahlow marketing savvy.

The vision: reshaping B2B sales

Kahlow's ambitions extend far beyond replacing website chatbots. She believes AI agents will eventually handle most account executive functions, fundamentally reshaping B2B sales. "We're replacing the sales engineer, customer success, but that AE/customer relationship is still happening," she explained. "I think over time, a lot of what the AE is doing right now will go away."

The ultimate dream? Artificial intelligence buyers are going to sell to each other through agent-to-agent transactions, thus eliminating the presence of human middlemen in the whole process. It seems to be a plot of sci-fi cinema, nonetheless, Kahlow is already in the process of doing it.

The irony of the present

Here's the awkward reality: 1Mind currently employs 44 humans and has 71 open positions, including account executives, the very roles Kahlow predicts AI will eventually replace. She's aware of the irony. For now, those humans are training the AI that will automate their successors.

Why this matters

The $30 million Series A funding, which has received support from Battery Ventures, Primary Ventures, Wing Venture Capital, Operator Collective, and Monday.com, ZoomInfo, Databricks, Box, Gong, Braze, and Verkada angels, is a signal for 1Mind to expand beyond its existing clientele.

Kahlow's history of transforming 6Sense into a category-defining firm gives her the trust to fulfill on daring claims. The early traction is impressive; 30+ enterprise customers signing six-figure annual contracts within just one year isn't typical for experimental technology.

The trust question

The transformation hinges on one critical factor: trust. Enterprise buyers signing million-pound deals aren't ready to complete transactions without human oversight, yet. But the keyword is "yet." As AI agents prove themselves reliable in lower-stakes interactions, that trust threshold will gradually shift.

1Mind represents a strategic bet that the future of B2B sales lies in intelligent inbound conversion rather than AI-powered spam. Unlike the flood of cold-calling bots annoying prospects globally, Mindy focuses on prospects who've already expressed interest, a much more promising use case for AI.

The bottom line

Kahlow's approach offers a glimpse of how AI might genuinely transform enterprise sales without simply adding to the noise. By focusing on conversion rather than prospecting, preventing hallucinations rather than accepting them, and building for trust rather than just efficiency, 1Mind is tackling the harder but potentially more valuable problem.

Whether AI agents will actually close million-pound deals without human oversight remains to be seen. But with proven enterprise traction and $40 million in funding, Kahlow has the runway to find out. And if her 6Sense track record is any indication, she just might pull it off.