Clara Labs: What Happened to the AI Scheduling Assistant
Clara was one of the first AI assistants you could CC on an email to book a meeting, the premium name in the category next to x.ai’s Amy. Then it was sold, went quiet, and most people assumed it was dead.
It isn’t. The Clara brand is live again in 2026, rebuilt and repriced.
The short answer: Clara Labs (YC Summer 2014) was acquired by TopFunnel on August 6, 2019, and its R&D team went to Twitter. The product kept running, spent 2023 to early 2026 behind a beta waitlist, and relaunched in 2026 under Clara AI, Inc. as a fully automated scheduler at $80/month for 30 meetings. It is still scheduling-only. If you want CC-to-schedule plus the rest of your inbox handled, Carly does both, starting at $35/month.
Clara Labs timeline at a glance
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2014 | Maran Nelson (CEO) and Michael Akilian (CTO) found Clara Labs; Y Combinator Summer 2014 batch |
| Early 2015 | Team says it scheduled “thousands of meetings entirely manually” before building software |
| Sep 2015 | Public launch, per Fortune |
| Jan 2016 | Human “Clara Remote Assistants” start at $11/hour via Upwork |
| Jul 2016 | Priced $199 to $499 a month; customers reportedly include Airbnb and Stripe |
| Jul 2017 | $7M Series A led by Basis Set Ventures, with Slack Fund, Sequoia and First Round |
| Sep 2018 | Homepage repositioned around interview scheduling for recruiting teams |
| Aug 6, 2019 | Sold to TopFunnel; R&D team joins Twitter Health |
| 2021 | Rival x.ai is bought by Bizzabo and shuts Amy down on Oct 31, 2021 |
| 2022 | TopFunnel renames itself Teamable |
| Sep 2023 to Feb 2026 | Homepage swaps “Start Free Trial” for a “Join Beta” button pointing to a Google Form |
| Mar to May 2026 | Relaunch as “The Original AI Scheduler”; by May the site is fully automated with an $80 Standard plan |
How Clara worked
You CC’d Clara (clara@claralabs.com, or a custom name on higher plans) on a thread. Clara replied to the other person with times, followed up when they went quiet, sent the invite, and handled reschedules. The other side just saw a polite assistant.
Behind the scenes, early Clara was a person-and-software hybrid. TechCrunch described how Clara would “convert uncertainty into simple questions that can be sent to humans on demand”, a proprietary Mechanical Turk. Those humans were contractors called Clara Remote Assistants. The author of Clara’s engineering blog told Hacker News in 2016 that the product ran on a “1-hr SLA for the processing of an incoming message.”
That model shaped the price. In 2017, TechCrunch wrote: “Bankrolling the human in human-in-the-loop does cost everyone more, but people are willing to pay for performance.” The top plan then was $399 a month, and Synced’s 2018 survey listed a $99/month “essential package” at the bottom.
What users said about Clara
Where it impressed
- A partner at investor Fuel Capital, who used Clara himself, writing in April 2018: “I often had people show up to the office and want to meet Clara, to say thank you for being so responsive and easy to schedule with … and were shocked to find out it was a computer.”
- A Product Hunt reviewer in June 2022: “Using Clara felt like working in the future … It consistently works and yields results.”
Our read: when it worked, the guest experience was the selling point. People on the other side of the thread believed Clara was a person.
Where people balked
- Price came up constantly. The same Product Hunt reviewer added: “Clara is expensive for most people, but if you’re scheduling meetings every single day, which can be time-consuming, you should be offloading that task to Clara.” Zapier’s 2026 roundup lists one con for Clara: “Expensive”.
- A Hacker News user in June 2016: “Their original announced pricing was 49$ per month but today their cheapest tier is 199$ per month. My first thought is that they use humans today to read each email.”
- Speed: Synced reported in 2018 that “Clara Labs’ median virtual assistant email response time is a sluggish 44 minutes.”
- Demand: a Hacker News commenter asked a 2026 startup how it compared to Clara, adding: “Most people that actually need something like this do have secretaries … and most other people that have a less severe form of that problem rarely want to actually pay for such a product.”
Our read: nobody complained that Clara was bad at scheduling. They complained that it cost $99 to $399 a month and took up to an hour to reply.
What actually happened to Clara Labs
On August 6, 2019, Clara’s account posted: “We’re excited to announce that Clara has been acquired by @TopFunnel, and that the Clara R&D team has joined @Twitter Health to bring our perspective designing human-in-the-loop systems to content moderation.” The next day the homepage carried a banner, “Clara has been acquired by TopFunnel”.
So the company split. TopFunnel, a recruiting-software startup, took the scheduling business; its announcement promised “For current Clara customers, things will continue to work as usual.” Twitter took the engineers. Co-founder Michael Akilian’s personal site now says he “co-founded and sold Clara Labs” and is working on “physical infrastructure to help AI advance across the natural sciences.”
TopFunnel renamed itself Teamable in 2022. Clara’s site stayed frozen on an old template, and by September 2023 the signup button read “Join Beta.” That lasted until early 2026, when the domain relaunched.
Did Clara Labs shut down? No. It was acquired, not closed, and it never went dark. The buyer was TopFunnel, now called Teamable.
Clara in 2026
The current site’s terms name the operator as Clara AI, Inc. It doesn’t say who owns it or how it relates to Teamable. Its help center is branded “Clara Classic Help Center.”
What changed is the human layer. The FAQ now says: “No human at Clara ever reads your emails. The AI handles every scheduling thread entirely, meaning there’s no manual review or human in the loop.” Zapier’s reviewer, who disclosed doing project work with the team, wrote that Clara 3.0 is “custom-built on years of scheduling data—which in the early stages included humans in the loop.”
Plans as listed on Clara’s site on Sep 28, 2026:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 for 14 days | 5 meetings, multiple calendars, preferences |
| Standard | $80/month | 30 meetings, delegate access, “advanced integrations” |
| Enterprise | Custom | No meeting cap, admin dashboard, custom domain, data retention |
At 30 meetings, Standard works out to about $2.67 a meeting. It works with Google Workspace and Outlook/Exchange. Zapier notes it “focuses exclusively on booking meetings with others”.
Why human-in-the-loop scheduling assistants struggled
The trade-off was always cost and speed against accuracy. Every ambiguous email a person had to check added wages and minutes.
Privacy was the other problem. In a 2016 Hacker News thread on Bloomberg’s “The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots,” one user wrote: “introducing a human under the guise of a blind-AI is unsettling.” Another said of the category: “doodle.com already solved this problem in a much less sexy way - just click the time you want.”
Both pioneers sold. x.ai sold to Bizzabo in 2021 and shut down Amy, saying it had “decided to shut down x.ai’s standalone scheduling tool.” Clara sold in 2019. The idea survived. Howie launched in 2025 with the same hybrid approach: GeekWire said it “escalates anything ambiguous to a human before hitting send” (more in our Howie review). Clara now says its rebuilt engine runs without one.
What to use instead of Clara
1. Carly: CC scheduling plus the rest of your inbox
Carly works the way Clara always did. CC Carly on a thread (“looping in Carly to find us a time”) and it checks your calendar, offers times to the other person, chases them when they go quiet, sends the invite, and handles the reschedule later. It works with Gmail/Google Workspace and Outlook/Microsoft 365, including several accounts at once.
Where Carly goes past Clara:
- More ways to schedule. For inbound requests, share a booking page. For group meetings, Carly can run a group availability poll.
- Your inbox, not just meetings. Carly triages email, drafts replies, and sends follow-ups. You can text Carly as well as email it.
- Email Agents. Under the Agents tab you can set up separate agents, each with its own email address, instructions, and knowledge files, like a recruiting coordinator address candidates email directly.
- Workflows. Build Zapier-style workflows triggered by a new email, a calendar event, a form submission, or a schedule, like logging every booked demo to your CRM.
- Integrations. Carly connects to thousands of apps, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack and Notion.
Pricing: free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. For a team rollout, book a call with the Carly team.
| Clara (2026) | Carly | |
|---|---|---|
| CC to schedule | Yes | Yes |
| Calendars | Google, Outlook/Exchange | Google, Outlook/Microsoft 365, multiple accounts |
| Channels | Email, text message, web | |
| Beyond scheduling | No | Inbox triage, drafts, Email Agents, workflows |
| Entry price | $80/month (30 meetings) | From $35/month |
2. Howie
The closest modern copy of the original Clara: a CC-to-schedule assistant that launched with a human review team behind it. See our Howie review and Howie vs Clara.
3. Reclaim or Motion
These aren’t CC assistants. They plan your own calendar: habits, focus time, and tasks. Pick one if your problem is your own week, not other people. Compare them in our best AI scheduling tools guide.
4. Calendly
The booking-link default. The other person picks a slot, which is fast but puts the work on them. See Calendly vs x.ai for how links compare with CC assistants.
For more options, see our Clara alternatives list, plus Blockit vs Clara and Skej vs Clara.
FAQ
Is Clara Labs still around? Yes, in a new form. The scheduling product has run since 2014, changed owners in 2019, and relaunched in 2026 under Clara AI, Inc. with a free 14-day trial and an $80/month Standard plan.
Did Clara Labs shut down? No. TopFunnel bought it in August 2019 and the service kept running. Its R&D team joined Twitter. The rival that did shut down was x.ai, which closed Amy on October 31, 2021.
Who founded Clara Labs? Maran Nelson (CEO) and Michael Akilian (CTO), in 2014. They went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2014 batch and raised a Series A led by Basis Set Ventures in 2017.
Does a human read my emails with Clara? Not anymore, according to Clara. Early Clara used paid human assistants to check messages. The 2026 site says no human reads your emails. If you want the same CC-to-schedule setup that also handles the rest of your inbox, try Carly.
What replaced x.ai’s Amy? When x.ai closed, it offered to help customers migrate to another platform. Today the CC-an-assistant model lives on in Clara’s relaunch, Howie, and Carly, which schedules over email or text and works with both Google and Outlook calendars.
How much does Clara cost? As of Sep 28, 2026: free for 14 days (5 meetings), Standard at $80/month for 30 meetings, and custom Enterprise pricing. In 2017 plans ran up to $399 a month.
Related: Clara alternatives · Howie vs Clara · SkipUp vs Clara · Best AI scheduling assistants
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"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
