Fresh off a $20 million Series A funding round, AI startup Profound’s core product helps brands audit AI search results using sector-specific queries.
In the case of financial operations platform Ramp, Profound asked fintech-related queries to see what sources platforms like Perplexity or ChatGPT surface in response. Profound’s tech showed gaps in visibility and content. To improve this, Ramp rewrote website copy, including targeted pages like Accounts Payable Software for Small Businesses. As a result, Ramp’s visibility in AI-generated answers in the accounts payable category jumped from 3.2% to 22.2%.
“They went from literally being invisible on ChatGPT to being mentioned 20% of the time,” said Profound CEO James Cadwallader.
Profound’s funding, announced last week, was led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, South Park Commons, and SV Angel.
The company, less than a year old, is currently valued at more than $100 million—just 10 months after closing a $3.5 million seed round, said Cadwallader.
AI is upending how people search for information online. According to Profound’s funding pitch deck, obtained by ADWEEK, 10% of U.S. internet users now turn to AI search engines first when searching online. Profound aims to support brands across generative advertising, shoppability, and agentic browsers, among others.
Profound is using the funding to expand its product suite. Recent tools include a crawler detector that alerts brands when AI bots visit their websites, and a Conversation Volume Explorer that tracks how often—and in what context—people query a brand or related topics across AI search engines.
“Combining all of that, the next big step for us is building a recommendation system that pulls from all these data sources to create content suggestions,” said Cadwallader. “That was a big piece of the $20 million we raised.”
Profound is working with over 100 brands, including Indeed, U.S. Bank, and Mejuri, up from 20 last year, according to Cadwallader.
Check out the pitch deck below.
