This Startup Just Raised $180 Million to Get Brands Mentioned by AI Chatbots
Profound has raised $180 million in private funding at a $1.8 billion value, less than seven months after its last round, according to TechCrunch. The value is what investors think the company is worth.
The round was led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and South Park Commons took part.
Profound closed a $96 million Series C on March 15, 2026, at a $1 billion valuation, according to Investing. That was about seven months before the Series D announcement on Sept. 15, 2026. The company was founded in 2024.
Profound makes software to help brands show up in AI search results. It describes itself as an AI marketing platform to win in AI search platforms, and says its platform helps brands work across Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews, according to company materials on its website. These tools give a direct answer instead of a list of links. Brands want that answer to mention them, much like a shop wants a trusted guide to recommend it.
Profound says its revenue increased 3x in the past six months and that it now serves more than 1,000 enterprise customers, including Comcast, The Estée Lauder Companies and Walmart.
Profound says its AI Marketer is trained on what consumers prompt, what agents cite, and context from brand teams. In plain terms, it learns from what people ask, what sources chatbots name, and information from the brands. The company says it analyzes billions of real user conversations to understand intent.
Its published customer claims point to visibility and workflow gains rather than traditional rank tracking. The website claims Plaid achieved a 50% increase in AI Search visibility while saving time with Profound Agents, that MongoDB saved 30% time using Profound Agents, a result attributed to Organic Acquisition Team Lead Fiona Erickson, and a 100x increase in monthly revenue from AI systems for one client, attributed to Gr0 CEO Kevin Miller.
Profound said it will use the Series D funding to expand its applied AI lab in New York City and San Francisco, as reported by Manila Times.
The broader context here is that each AI tool works in its own way. Each has its own method for finding information, choosing which sources to name, and responding to what users ask. Tracking presence in one system does not translate cleanly to another, and data on user questions gets old fast as models and interfaces change. That makes steady tracking of real conversations expensive to build in-house.
In my view, the timing of the money matters alongside the valuation. A second large raise within seven months, with insider participation and a stated investment in an applied lab, suggests Profound sees model and measurement work as the bottleneck, not sales capacity. For practitioners, the useful questions are narrower than the headline number: coverage across engines, freshness of prompt data, and whether visibility metrics connect to pipeline. If those hold, this work could become a regular budget item and help useful brand information reach people.
