AI Startup Profound Raises $180M in Series D Funding

The round also saw participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Saga Ventures, Evantic, and South Park Commons.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its platform capabilities and accelerate research efforts.

What is Profound?

Profound is an AI marketing platform that helps businesses understand how their brands appear in AI-powered search and answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Its platform provides AI Search insights and an agentic workbench that helps marketing teams research, create, update, and manage content across multiple channels.

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Profound's AI Marketer can identify earned media opportunities, refresh outdated content, conduct competitive analysis, analyze paid advertising performance, and launch new ads.

How Much Funding Has Profound Raised?

Profound has raised $180 million in its latest Series D funding round at a $1.8 billion valuation.

The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Saga Ventures, Evantic, and South Park Commons.

Previous funding amounts and dates were not provided.

Who Invested in Profound’s Series D Round?

The Series D was co-led by:

• Sequoia Capital
• Kleiner Perkins

Existing investors participating in the round included:

• Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Khosla Ventures
• Saga Ventures
• Evantic
• South Park Commons

Why the Funding Matters

Profound will use the new funding to expand its product capabilities and further its research efforts.

The company is focused on helping marketers respond to the growing use of AI answer engines for product research and brand comparisons.

Its Ads Studio also allows marketers to build, launch, and manage AI Search campaigns while tracking campaign performance across OpenAI, Google, and Meta ad managers.

Who founded Profound?

Profound was founded by James Cadwallader and Dylan Babbs.

The company is headquartered in New York City.

Market and Business Growth

Profound now serves more than 1,000 enterprise brands and says its platform is used by more than one-third of the Fortune 100.

Its customers include Comcast, The Estée Lauder Companies, Walmart, Campari Group, Royal Bank of Canada, Zoom, ServiceNow, Ramp, Cursor, MongoDB, and Figma.

The company says its platform is used by 16% of the Fortune 500 and is built on more than 2 billion real user prompts.

What Happens Next?

Profound will use the new capital to expand its AI marketing capabilities and continue research.

The company will continue developing tools that help marketing teams understand AI search behavior, improve content, analyze competitors, and manage advertising campaigns across major platforms.

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