Profound Nabs $20M Series A to Bring AI Visibility to the Marketing Front Lines
In an online world shifting rapidly from search pages to AI-powered answers, Profound is making sure marketers aren’t left in the dark. The New York-based startup just closed a $20 million Series A, led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s VC arm), Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, South Park Commons, and SV Angel.
That list alone signals big confidence in Profound’s mission: arming brands with the tools to understand—and control—how AI agents describe them.
“In a zero-click world, the conversation between consumers and an AI agent is the new first impression,” said CEO and co-founder James Cadwallader. “Profound shows marketers exactly how chatbots describe their products—and gives them the levers to shape that narrative.”
From Web Pages to AI Agents: A Marketing Disruption
Traditional SEO isn’t dead, but it’s being quietly replaced by AI search. With ChatGPT topping one billion weekly users and over 60% of consumers now starting product research through AI assistants, brands face a new problem: they’re being talked about in channels they can’t see and don’t control.
That’s where Profound steps in.
Profound’s Platform: Making the Invisible Visible
The startup has developed a multi-pronged platform to offer “AI visibility”—a new category of marketing intelligence tailored for the agentic internet, where AI agents, not web browsers, drive discovery.
Key features include:
- Answer Engine Insights: Shows how chatbots talk about your brand
- Agent Analytics: Uncovers how AI crawlers interpret your website
- Conversation Explorer: Flags trending topics in AI agent search
- Agents: Uses advanced reasoning models to deliver real-time, actionable insights
With over 100 million AI search queries processed monthly, support in six languages, and early enterprise clients like Indeed, MongoDB, and Ramp, Profound isn’t just riding a trend—it’s shaping it.
Companies using the platform have reported 25–40% increases in AI answer share-of-voice in just two months.
Profound Lite: Democratizing AI Visibility
Alongside the funding, the company also launched Profound Lite, a self-serve plan at $499/month aimed at startups and smaller marketing teams. That price point is a clear signal: AI visibility is no longer just for Fortune 500s.
“AI visibility has gone mainstream,” said Cadwallader. “It’s now a must-have for every brand—big or small.”
Backed by an Elite Bench of Operators
The investor roster reads like a who’s-who of tech insiders. Alongside institutional VCs, angel investors include:
- Guillermo Rauch (Vercel)
- Andrew Karam (Applovin)
- Jordan Singer (Mainframe)
- David Senra (Founders Podcast)
- Kevin Wang (Braze)
Their involvement underscores confidence in both the technical and commercial upside of Profound’s strategy.
The Bigger Play: Infrastructure for the Agentic Internet
The fresh capital will be used to expand Profound’s engineering and data science teams, deepen integration across emerging AI platforms, and build products for the next evolution of the web—where AI agents, not humans, are often the primary consumers of digital content.
“As the web shifts from pages to AI answers, Profound provides the infrastructure every company will need,” said Ilya Fushman, Partner at Kleiner Perkins.
That shift—from clicks to conversation—could redefine the marketing funnel as we know it. And Profound wants to be the company that bridges the gap between brands and bots.
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