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How to find a company's CEO
Paste your target account list into Sculptor
Drop in your list of target companies. Sculptor searches Clay's people database for the CEO at each account and waterfalls through 150+ providers to find a verified email.
Sculptor matches CEOs and verifies their emails
Sculptor searches Clay's B2B contact data for the CEO title at each company, then waterfalls through 150+ providers in sequence to find a verified work email. Only rows where the waterfall finds a match get an email appended.
Get your CEO list with verified email addresses
The finished table has company name and CEO email for matched rows. Push to Smartlead, Instantly, or your sequencer to trigger a campaign the moment a row lands.
Why Clay for finding a company's CEO
Find People search scoped to your account list
Get the CEO match for each company you care about. Clay's Find People search filters by title keywords like "CEO" and "Chief Executive Officer," scoped to your exact account list so you never pull contacts outside your target set.
Waterfall enrichment across 150+ providers
Get a verified work email for matched rows. Clay waterfalls through 150+ providers in sequence and only charges credits when one returns a hit, delivering high match rates on common B2B titles like CEO.
Email verification before it hits your sequencer
Every email on matched rows runs through verification before leaving Clay, flagging catch-alls and role inboxes so your deliverability stays clean when you push to Smartlead or Instantly.
One-click push to CRM or sequencer
Send your finished CEO list directly to HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, or Salesloft in seconds. Clay's native integrations keep the table in sync so new matches flow into your CRM without manual exports.
Clay is a game changer for marketing, data, and operations. We have 3x our enrichment rate with Clay’s combination of data providers. Clay makes it easy to use AI for GTM initiatives, unlocking new workflows that were infeasible before.
Frequently asked questions
How does Sculptor find a company's CEO?
Sculptor searches Clay's snapshot database of billions of people profiles, filtering by CEO title keywords with fuzzy matching to catch variations like "Chief Executive Officer" or "Co-founder & CEO." It then runs waterfall enrichment across multiple contact-data providers in sequence to return a verified email for each CEO. If a profile is missing from the snapshot database, Claygent runs a Google-powered AI search to locate it.
How accurate are the CEO emails Clay finds?
Clay tested 12 email finders across 4,700+ contacts and found top providers scoring above 96% confidence on accuracy. A single provider typically covers only about 30% of contacts, but waterfall enrichment layers multiple providers in sequence to push coverage to roughly 80%. You pay only when a provider returns a result, so you get higher coverage without wasting credits on misses.
Can I find CEO emails for a whole list at once?
Yes. Paste a list of companies, upload a CSV, or pipe rows from an existing Clay table into Sculptor. It processes every row in bulk, returning company name and CEO email for each. From there, push the completed table directly to HubSpot, Salesforce, or your sequencer to launch outreach without any manual copy-paste.
Is it legal to cold email CEOs I find this way?
In the U.S., CAN-SPAM governs all commercial email, including B2B. It requires accurate sender info, a clear opt-out mechanism, and a valid physical address. Penalties can reach $53,088 per non-compliant email. In the EU, GDPR allows B2B cold outreach under the legitimate interest basis when the email is relevant to the recipient's professional role and you honor opt-out requests promptly.
Always check the rules for your jurisdiction before launching outreach, and honor every unsubscribe request within the required timeframe.