It watches signals that indicate a company might be in market — funding, hiring, leadership changes, filings, product launches — then researches the account against whatever context it has access to, and writes outreach that references something specific. The distinction from a sequencing tool is decision-making: a sequencer sends what you wrote to the list you built, while an AI BDR decides who is worth contacting and what to say.
An account in your CRM posts three enterprise sales roles and files an 8-K naming a new CRO. The AI BDR surfaces both signals, drafts an email to the new CRO referencing the hiring pattern and a relevant customer outcome, and places it in a review queue for a human to approve or discard.
An AI BDR is software that performs a business development rep's prospecting workflow autonomously — monitoring intent signals, researching accounts, and drafting personalized outreach across email and LinkedIn.
The terms are used interchangeably. Where teams separate the roles, BDRs work outbound into cold accounts and SDRs qualify inbound demand; the software is generally the same and differs only in which signals it's pointed at.
They compress the list building and first-draft writing, which is most of the hours. The judgment about which accounts are worth pursuing, and how to handle a reply, has not transferred.