Kickscale Raises €2.1M to Build European Alternative to US AI Sales Intelligence Platforms

The European sales intelligence market has long been dominated by American platforms like Gong, Salesforce, and HubSpot — tools designed primarily for the US that don't always translate well to European business contexts. This disconnect has created an opportunity that Austrian startup Kickscale is seizing with its €2.1 million funding round announced today.

Kickscale’s Founding Team (left to right): Herwig Gangl (Advisor), Markus Jenul (CMO), Gerald Zankl (CEO) and Fabian Riedlsperger (CTO) @ Michael Stabentheiner

“We are building the next-gen European Sales Intelligence Platform with our €2.1M funding round to accelerate AI innovation, product, marketing, and sales. Our customers will benefit from even more value we are going to provide over the next couple of months.”, says Gerald Zankl, CEO & Co-Founder of Kickscale.

Since launching in 2024, Kickscale has quickly acquired over 100 B2B clients across the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, including HILL International Group, Haufe Group, KK Company, ApprovalMax and bookingkit. Kickscale’s customers have reported up to a 24% improvement in sales closing rates and an average of 40 hours saved per sales rep on routine and administrative tasks. 

The investment round was led by aws Gründungsfonds, with participation from altitudeVC, known for its strategic investments in European SME technology solutions, Calm/Storm Ventures, and Carinthian Venture Fond. Notable existing investors continuing their support include the former CEO of Zalando Lounge, Julius Göllner, serial social media entrepreneur Michael Kamleitner, and Bitmovin co-founders Stefan Lederer and Christopher Mueller.

This strategic funding accelerates the company’s mission to build the next generation of sales intelligence technology designed specifically for European businesses, with plans to expand to the Middle East and Asia.

Gaining traction where American companies struggle

Kickscale provides a revenue intelligence platform that uses AI to capture, analyse, and organise real and virtual sales and customer conversations. By transforming conversation data into actionable insights, it empowers sales teams to forecast more accurately, identify at-risk deals, and replicate winning sales strategies. Unlike dominant US solutions, Kickscale’s technology is built from the ground up to address the needs of European SME businesses including data privacy standards, and multilingual and regional environments.

Hans Christian Heinemeyer, Chief Revenue Officer at bookingkit, said: "We've looked into several US-based platforms, but it felt like they were built for a different business culture and mostly for big enterprises. Their approach simply didn't match how we build and maintain client relationships in the DACH region and in Europe in general. Furthermore, GDPR and legal compliance is a crucial requirement for us."

Hisa Machida, Director Solutions Support, KK Company Japan, said:  "Kickscale has proven to be an outstanding solution for our sales team here in Japan. The platform handles Japanese language conversations with impressive accuracy, which is not always the case with global tools. We truly see the value in having a revenue intelligence platform that understands and supports local markets. In short, Kickscale helps our sales and product teams by providing highly productive performance for reviewing sales meetings and their improvements. Especially in today’s challenging economic environment, having this kind of insight into our sales and customer interactions is more important than ever."

The European Alternative That Drives Tech Independence

Unlike dominant US solutions, Kickscale’s technology is built from the ground up to address European business needs, data privacy standards, and multilingual and regional environments. While main competitor Gong does a great job in large enterprises and in the US, Kickscale focuses specifically on the needs of European small and medium businesses.

Ingo Drexler, Partner at āltitude and Kickscale investor, said: “Our investment in Kickscale reflects our confidence in the team’s vision to build Europe’s most valuable conversation-data engine. By capturing and analysing every sales interaction, they are creating a compounding intelligence layer that will power predictive success and sustain long-term competitive advantages for their clients."

“Kickscale is designed specifically for European SME and Mid-Market companies with unwavering commitments to data privacy, seamless usability, and sophisticated multilingual capabilities that understand the nuances of European dialects and business cultures.", Gerald Zankl continues. “For far too long, European businesses have relied on US tech giants for critical sales intelligence tools. Today's political uncertainties make it clear that Europe needs more sovereign technology solutions. We're building an alternative to US-platforms that currently dominate the global market.” 

Key Challenges Sales Teams Face in Europe

Kickscale has identified several key challenges European sales teams face when using American-designed platforms:

1. Different relationship dynamics: European B2B sales cycles typically involve longer relationship-building phases than the more transactional American approach.

2. Cultural diversity: Europe isn't a monolith. Germans, Italians, Dutch, and French all have distinct business cultures with different expectations. American tools rarely account for these nuances.

3. Language limitations: Most European deals happen in local languages, but US platforms primarily support English, creating unnecessary communication barriers.

4. Privacy expectations: European privacy norms and GDPR requirements create fundamental compatibility issues with how many American sales platforms are architected.

Sales Productivity is Broken

According to CRM leader Salesforce, 66% of a sales rep’s time is still spent on non-selling activities, highlighting a major efficiency gap turning salespeople into process managers instead of customer experts.

The pressure for sales teams on productivity is increasing, especially in a volatile economic environment. One of the biggest productivity killers for sales teams is the overwhelming amount of time spent on manual CRM updates, administrative tasks, and email follow-ups, instead of selling - leaving reps buried in non-revenue-generating work that slows down momentum and drains focus. 

No Customer Understanding

Adding to this, sales leaders often lack visibility into what’s actually happening in customer conversations, making it hard to identify risks or replicate successful behaviors. Forecasting remains unreliable, frequently built on incomplete or subjective CRM data rather than real customer engagement.

Inconsistent messaging across sales reps further complicates scaling efforts, and coaching remains reactive and inefficient, often based on anecdotal input rather than actual customer data. Sales, marketing, and product teams are often misaligned due to slow or missing feedback loops from the field, leading to missed opportunities and delayed improvements.

AI to Increase Productivity and Revenue

Kickscale directly addresses these issues by providing a revenue intelligence platform that captures, analyzes, and organizes real sales and customer conversations. By transforming conversation data into actionable insights, Kickscale empowers sales teams to forecast more accurately, identify at-risk deals, and replicate winning behaviors.

The platform aligns sales with marketing and product teams through customer-driven insights, improving both strategy and execution. With automated note-taking, key moment detection, and rep performance tracking, Kickscale helps reduce time spent on manual tasks and enables managers to coach more effectively. In today’s economic climate, Kickscale delivers the efficiency and clarity revenue teams need—backed by technology that works seamlessly even in local markets like Japan.

About Kickscale

Kickscale is an AI-powered SaaS platform that delivers critical insights into customer conversations, empowers sales representatives to optimize their meetings, and boosts their efficiency through intelligent automation.

The “Sales Oracle” transforms how small and medium enterprises across Europe drive revenue growth through its AI-powered platform that delivers customer insights, sales coaching, and process automation tailored to European market requirements.

Kickscale is led and was founded by an experienced team of former scaleup managers and IT experts. Gerald Zankl, Markus Jenul, Fabian Riedlsperger and Herwig Gangl founded Kickscale to help sales teams boost performance through AI insights & coaching while automating administrative tasks like note-taking and CRM updates.

Earlier companies where Zankl and Jenul were senior executives and consultants (Bitmovin, Anyline, Holo-Light, etc.) grew to a total valuation of over 500 million US dollars. The founders, with roots in Carinthia and offices in Klagenfurt and Graz, founded Kickscale in 2020 and made a very successful pivot in 2024 to their current solution. Since its foundation, the company has been financed with its own funds and support from KWF (Carinthian Business Promotion Fund), the Vienna Business Agency, the Chamber of Commerce, various Business Angels and the investors (altitude, aws Gründungsfonds, Calm/Storm Ventures, Carinthian Venture Fonds) joining this round.

About āltitude

āltitude is an early-stage venture capital firm, operating out of Berlin, London, and Zurich, focused on backing startups that accelerate the digital transformation of SMEs. By providing pre-seed/seed investments, the fund targets a distinct segment of B2B software – betting on SME Tech as the next decade’s driving force for innovation, efficiency, and growth in Europe.

About aws Gründungsfonds

The aws Gründungsfonds is an Austrian venture capital fund with a fund volume of around EUR 70 million. As an investor, the aws Start-up Fund supports start-ups from the initial growth phase through subsequent financing rounds (Series A/B) to exit. The aws Start-up Fund sees itself as a long-term, stable partner with a hands-on approach that actively supports the founding teams as a sparring partner. Since 2013, together with the predecessor fund and in cooperation with national and international co-investors, more than EUR 500 million has been invested in over 45 investments and numerous exits have been successfully realized.

About Calm/Storm

Calm/Storm Ventures is Europe's most active HealthTech investor and one of the leading early-stage funds focusing on digital solutions in health, wellbeing, and beyond. With around 90 portfolio companies and a strong track record in building internationally scaling startups, Calm/Storm supports founders from day one. The fund is deeply embedded in one of Europe's largest founder communities – a network of successful entrepreneurs who actively participate in investments, mentoring, and strategic support.

About Carinthian Venture Fund

The Carinthian Venture Fund invests in high-growth startups with regional ties to Carinthia. Its goal is to support young companies in their scaling through strategic capital, bring innovations from Carinthia to international markets, and promote a strong, future-oriented startup ecosystem in the federal state in the long term.