WillItSurvive
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Tome

tome.app ↗

Presentation app that pivoted its founders to Lightfield, an AI-native CRM.

Losing its protection
Assessed 31 July 2026 · Evidence as of 31 July 2026
The structural protection is eroding.
On the recordSince 31 July 2026 · Checkable from H2 2026 · Every call on the record Checkpoint: First public retention or revenue disclosure for Lightfield's signup cohort
The call

Tome the presentation product is gone, and its founders are trying the same AI-first playbook again as Lightfield, this time against Salesforce and HubSpot instead of Microsoft and Google.

Lightfield is a new CRM tool that uses artificial intelligence to help businesses manage customer relationships. It is hard to build because it needs years of customer data to work well, but it is easy to copy because Salesforce and HubSpot, the biggest players in this space, are already adding similar AI features to their own products for free to customers who already use them. The one thing that could change the picture is whether Lightfield can grow fast enough and keep customers paying before Salesforce and HubSpot's AI tools get good enough that nobody needs a separate product.

Why
01
AI pressure: Salesforce Agentforce, HubSpot Breeze AI agents. Both incumbents already ship AI agents that auto-ingest customer data, the same bundling pattern that killed the original Tome deck product. Could AI do the core job? Yes, likely.
02
Bigger players: Salesforce, HubSpot. Own the installed base Lightfield needs to reach; can fold comparable agentic CRM features into existing contracts at no extra cost. Could a giant copy it? Yes, easily.
03
What protects it. Nothing proven yet: the data lock-in Lightfield needs has to be built from its ~2,000 early signups, not inherited.
What would change this call
Lightfield announces a Series C at a valuation above the $300M Series B mark. Would show investors see durable revenue, not just signups.
Salesforce or HubSpot ships an agentic, auto-ingesting CRM feature into their SMB tier within a year. Would repeat the bundling pattern that killed Tome's presentations product.
Lightfield discloses net revenue retention or a named enterprise logo at Team/Enterprise tier. Would show the ~2,000 signups are converting to paying, retained customers.
Key numbers
  • $75.3M-$81.15M raised across Seed through Series B (2023-02-22)
  • ~2,000 companies signed up for Lightfield in 3 months (2026-04-14)
  • Cut ~20% of 59-person staff in April 2024 refocus (2024-04-16)
Named risks
  • No priced funding round since February 2023, leaving Lightfield on a stale cap table. Severity: high
  • Lightfield's claimed signups and revenue are unaudited and unverified beyond press coverage. Severity: medium
  • Salesforce and HubSpot shipping comparable agentic CRM features could close Lightfield's differentiation window before data lock-in forms. Severity: high
  • Original product had no durable moat and was fully commoditized by platform bundling, a pattern that could repeat. Severity: high
Rivals, as read in July 2026
RivalDirectionEvidence
Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Canva Magic Designlosing toBundled AI slide generation displaced Tome's presentation product by April 2025
SalesforcecontestingShipped Agentforce agentic CRM features on 2025-10-13 while Lightfield targets it as a legacy alternative
HubSpotcontestingLightfield explicitly positions itself as an alternative to HubSpot for founders and small teams, Nov 2025
Gamma, Beautiful.ai, Pitch, Prezigaining onCited by reviewers as overtaking Tome in AI deck generation before its April 2025 shutdown
Questions people ask
Is Tome still running its presentation app in 2026?
No. Tome's AI presentation product was fully shut down and user data deleted by April 2025 after Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Canva Magic Design commoditized AI slide generation. The founders relaunched under a new name, Lightfield, an AI-native CRM, in November 2025.
Could AI replace Tome's core product?
It already did. Tome's slide-generation feature was itself an AI tool, and it was absorbed into Microsoft, Google, and Canva's existing subscriptions, driving Tome's April 2024 layoffs and its April 2025 shutdown, per Semafor reporting dated 2024-04-16.
Who founded Tome and what are they doing now?
Keith Peiris (ex-Instagram/Meta) and Henri Liriani (ex-Facebook/Meta) founded Tome in 2020. After shutting down Tome's presentation product in April 2025, they launched Lightfield, an AI-native CRM, in November 2025, per Contrary Research dated 2025-11-13.
Has Tome or Lightfield raised new funding since 2023?
No new priced round has been reported since Tome's $43M Series B closed in February 2023 at a $300M valuation, led by Lightspeed. As of late 2025, Lightfield still operates on that same cap table, per Contrary Research.
Is Tome's biggest competitor Salesforce?
For its current product Lightfield, yes. Lightfield explicitly targets Salesforce and HubSpot as legacy alternatives, and Salesforce announced its own agentic CRM features (Agentforce) on 2025-10-13, directly contesting Lightfield's territory.
How many users did Tome have before it shut down?
Tome reached 1 million users in 134 days, the fastest productivity software to do so at the time, and grew to an estimated 20-25 million cumulative users by 2024, per Yahoo Finance (2023-02-22) and SF Examiner (2026-04-14).
Timeline
  • 2026-01-22Lightfield ships public beta of REST API and CRM-agent data-model configuration
  • 2025-11-19Lightfield, founders' AI-native CRM, publicly launches
  • 2025-10-13Salesforce announces Agentforce agentic enterprise features
  • 2025-04Tome presentation product and all user data fully shut down
  • 2025-03-01Last date to create new Tome presentations per one source
  • 2024-10Tome announces it is moving away from presentations entirely
  • 2024-04-16Tome lays off about 20% of 59 staff to refocus on revenue
  • 2023-02-22Tome closes $43M Series B at $300M valuation, hits 1M users in 134 days
  • 2021-09Tome raises $26M Series A at roughly $175M valuation
  • 2020Tome founded by Keith Peiris and Henri Liriani
Revision history
31 July 2026
First assessed. Losing its protection. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.
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