TLDR: Profound, an AI marketing platform, has successfully closed a $35 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital, bringing its total funding to $58.5 million. The company’s AI Visibility Platform helps brands control their presence in AI-generated search results and conversations, addressing the significant shift from traditional SEO to AI-driven discovery.
Profound, a pioneering force in the evolving digital marketing landscape, announced today the successful completion of a $35 million Series B funding round. The investment was spearheaded by Sequoia Capital, with notable participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, and South Park Commons. This latest capital infusion elevates Profound’s total funding to an impressive $58.5 million, underscoring investor confidence in its innovative AI Visibility Platform.
The funding arrives at a pivotal moment as artificial intelligence fundamentally reshapes how consumers discover and interact with brands. Profound’s platform is designed to empower businesses to understand, improve, and measure their appearance in AI-powered search results and conversational AI responses. This addresses a critical need in what co-founder and CEO James Cadwallader describes as ‘the most significant shift in how consumers discover and research products since the dawn of the internet.’ He further emphasized, ‘AI assistants are becoming the new front door to every business.’
The urgency for such a platform is highlighted by recent data: AI-powered chatbots accounted for over 5% of U.S. desktop search traffic in early 2025, a substantial increase from 1.3% in early 2024. Furthermore, platforms like ChatGPT now boast 700 million weekly users, a fourfold increase in the past year, and more than 60% of consumers are initiating product research with AI assistants rather than traditional search engines. This rapid adoption signals the emergence of a ‘zero-click world,’ where AI conversations form the initial brand impression.
Profound’s platform serves as a ‘command center’ for modern AI marketing, enabling brands to optimize structured content for AI consumption rather than solely for human readers. It utilizes advanced models, including GPT-5, to analyze AI-generated content, providing actionable insights for content creation and optimization. Unlike traditional read-only marketing platforms, Profound offers read/write capabilities, allowing for one-click creation of AI-optimized content.
Since its launch less than a year ago, Profound has rapidly gained traction, attracting over 2,000 marketers from more than 500 organizations. Its growing roster of high-growth and enterprise customers includes prominent names such as Ramp, US Bank, Indeed, MongoDB, DocuSign, and Chime. Early adopters have reported dramatic improvements in AI visibility, with some attributing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue directly to AI assistants mentioning their products and services.
Alfred Lin, Partner at Sequoia, expressed strong conviction in Profound’s trajectory, stating, ‘Profound’s vision extends well beyond AI-powered SEO. The Profound platform has the potential to become the command center that empowers businesses to stand out and succeed in the age of superintelligence.’ Anas Biad, also a Partner at Sequoia and a Profound board member, added, ‘As AI agents become the primary interface between consumers and brands, Profound provides the critical infrastructure every company will need to remain competitive.’
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The newly secured capital will be strategically deployed to accelerate the development of Profound’s agentic workflow features, expand its content generation capabilities, and support international expansion efforts as global brands seek to establish their AI presence across diverse markets and languages. Co-founder and CTO Dylan Babbs highlighted the company’s commitment to building a world-class engineering team in Manhattan, working on a problem that is both ‘fun and challenging,’ offering an alternative path for top engineers often drawn to fintech or hedge funds.
