What Happened to 11x AI? The TechCrunch Report, Explained

11x is still operating. What happened is that on March 24, 2025 TechCrunch published an investigation, by Dominic-Madori Davis and Marina Temkin and based on what it described as nearly two dozen sources including investors and current and former employees, reporting that the a16z and Benchmark backed AI SDR startup had listed companies as customers that said they were not customers, and that its headline revenue figure counted contracts that customers had already exited through a three-month break clause. ZoomInfo told TechCrunch it was not a customer and had not given permission for its logo to be used, and raised the prospect of legal action. Airtable said it ran a very short trial that was never used in production. 11x told TechCrunch it reports contracted ARR, that its investors knew this, that it promptly removed inaccurate customer mentions, and that its retention rate was 79%. No regulator has brought a case, and none of this has been tested in court.

That last sentence is the part most write-ups drop, and it is the reason this page exists. There is a real difference between a journalistic investigation and an enforcement action, and if you are evaluating AI sales tools right now you should know which one you are reading about. What follows is taken from the TechCrunch report itself, re-read on August 5, 2026, plus our own check of what 11x publishes today.

What happened to 11x AI?

11x sells what it calls digital workers: Alice for outbound and Julian for inbound. It raised heavily and fast, and by late 2024 it was widely treated as the category leader in AI sales development. In March 2025 TechCrunch reported that the picture behind the logos was different from the one on the website. Here is the documented sequence.

We checked that last row ourselves rather than repeating it. As of today the site is up, the product is being sold, and there is no public pricing page to point a buyer at.

What did TechCrunch actually report about 11x?

Three separate claims, and they are worth keeping apart because they carry very different weight.

Customer logos. A ZoomInfo spokesperson told TechCrunch: "We did not give them permission to use our logo in any manner, and we are not a customer." ZoomInfo also said 11x had been claiming it as a customer across multiple channels since November, and that in its trial the product "performed significantly worse than our SDR employees." It raised deceptive trade practices, trademark infringement, misappropriation of goodwill and false advertising. Airtable said its trial was "very short," that the product "was never used in production and never rolled out to our sales team," and that it had not granted logo permission. TechCrunch reported that Pleo and Rho, by contrast, confirmed they were genuine users.

Revenue reporting. Former employees told TechCrunch that 11x counted one-year contracts at full annual value even where a three-month break clause effectively made them trials, and continued counting them after customers exercised that clause. Against a publicly discussed figure near $10 million, one account described roughly $14 million in claimed annual recurring revenue against about $3 million actually retained past the trial window.

Churn. One employee quoted in the report put customer loss at 70% to 80%, with the worst of it in the earliest cohorts.

11x's response, as published in the same article, was that it reports contracted ARR rather than realised ARR, that its investors were aware of that convention, that it removed any undesired or inaccurate customer mentions promptly, that its retention rate was 79%, and that its product outperforms human SDRs.

What is the difference between ARR and CARR?

This is the technical heart of the dispute and it is genuinely worth understanding, because it is not automatically wrongdoing. Annual recurring revenue is usually meant to describe revenue you are actually collecting on a repeating basis. Contracted ARR, or CARR, counts the annualised value of signed contracts including ones that have not started billing yet. Plenty of legitimate companies report CARR to investors, and say so.

The contested part is what happens when a contract contains a three-month break clause and the customer uses it. At that point the contract is over, and counting its full annual value in either metric is hard to defend. TechCrunch reported that former employees said this happened. 11x said it reports CARR and that investors knew. Both of those things can be true at once, which is exactly why this ended up as a dispute rather than a regulatory matter.

The practical lesson for a buyer has nothing to do with accounting standards. If a vendor's growth story is the main reason you trust the product, ask which metric the number is, and ask what percentage of contracts survive past the break clause. A confident vendor will answer both.

Is the 11x story the same as the Air.ai case?

No, and conflating them does buyers a disservice. They sit at opposite ends of a spectrum.

The Air.ai matter was a government enforcement action about how a product was sold as a business opportunity, and we cover it in detail in what happened to Air.ai. The 11x matter is a reported dispute about marketing claims and revenue presentation at a company that is still trading. Treating them as the same story is how buyers end up either dismissing a real regulatory finding or condemning a company that has not been found to have done anything.

Is 11x still in business?

Yes. We loaded 11x.ai on August 5, 2026 and the site is live, marketing Alice as an outbound digital worker and Julian as an inbound one, with a homepage line citing more than $70 million raised from a16z and Benchmark. The pricing URL returns a 404, so anyone budgeting for it has to go through sales. If you are comparing it against other tools, our 11x alternative page lays out the differences in approach, and best AI SDR tools covers the wider field.

What should you ask an AI SDR vendor before signing?

The useful takeaway from all of this is not "avoid 11x." It is that the normal due diligence people apply to a $100,000 software purchase often evaporates when the category is new and the demo is impressive. Nine questions, all of which a solid vendor can answer in a single email:

• Give me three references I can pick from a list, not three you selected. The logo wall is marketing. A customer who will take your call is evidence.
• Which of the logos on your site are paying production customers today? Ask for it in writing. This is the exact question that broke the 11x story open.
• Is your published growth number ARR or CARR? And what share of contracts renews past the initial break window.
• What is your break clause, and what is your notice period? If a vendor will not put a short exit in the contract, they are asking you to carry all the risk of a young product.
• What does the AI actually do on the call, in sequence? Some tools in this category write emails and hand the dialing to a human. That is a legitimate product, but it is not the same purchase.
• Who owns the call recordings, transcripts and prospect data? And what happens to them when you leave.
• How do your security controls map to SOC 2? You are handing a vendor your prospect list. The same controls-to-framework mapping you would demand from any data processor applies here, and a vendor that cannot produce it has told you something.
• Who carries the compliance liability? Under the FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule and the FCC's February 2024 confirmation that AI voices fall under the TCPA, the exposure sits with the seller on whose behalf calls are made. Read the indemnity clause. We cover the detail in is AI cold calling legal.
• What does month four look like? Nearly every outbound program looks fine in month one. They diverge once the easy part of the list is exhausted.

None of that is specific to AI. It is the diligence you would run on any vendor whose failure would cost you a quarter of pipeline. The reason it gets skipped in this category is that the products demo extremely well, and a demo is a controlled environment.

What this means for buying AI sales tools in 2026

The market has matured since March 2025, and the useful shift is that buyers now ask harder questions earlier. Three habits are worth keeping.

First, separate what a vendor publishes from what a vendor will confirm in writing. Published pricing, published methodology and published limitations are a signal in a category where six out of ten providers we recently checked would not put a number on their own page, which is documented on our appointment setting services and cold calling services pages.

Second, judge outbound tools on held meetings that fit your ideal customer profile, not on booked meetings or activity dashboards. A tool can generate impressive volume and no pipeline. We work through the arithmetic in AI cold calling ROI and the realistic connect rates in cold call connect rate benchmarks.

Third, be sceptical of anyone claiming the technology has settled, in either direction. AI callers do genuinely work for structured qualification and booking, and they genuinely do not replace a skilled human on a complex consultative first call. We set out where the line falls, with the caveats, in does AI cold calling work and on the AI SDR page.

The short version

11x was the subject of a March 2025 TechCrunch investigation reporting misrepresented customer logos, contested revenue figures and heavy churn. The named companies denied being customers in direct quotes. 11x disputed the framing, pointed to contracted ARR as its stated metric and to a 79% retention rate, and removed the contested logos. No regulator brought a case and nothing has been tested in court, which makes this materially different from the FTC action against Air.ai. The company is still trading today and publishes no pricing. If you are shopping this category, the lesson is procedural rather than moral: ask for references you choose, ask which revenue metric you are being shown, insist on a short exit, and read the indemnity clause before the demo impresses you into skipping all of it.