Profound, a New York City-based company operating in the burgeoning field of AI search visibility, has successfully raised $35 million in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Sequoia Capital, with continued participation from existing venture capital firms including Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, and South Park Commons. This latest funding round increases Profound’s total capital raised to $58.5 million.
The company, launched less than a year ago, aims to help brands maintain visibility and control over their presence in AI-generated search responses, a space it claims to have pioneered. This emerging sector addresses the shift in how users access information, as AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity increasingly divert search queries away from traditional search engines like Google.
According to the Wall Street Journal, AI-powered chatbots now account for over 5% of U.S. desktop search traffic, a significant increase from just 1.3% in early 2024. This rapid adoption underscores the growing urgency for brands to adapt their digital strategies to the AI-first internet.
Profound has quickly gained traction, securing Fortune 10 clients and hundreds of others. While specific client names were limited for public disclosure, notable examples include Ramp, U.S. Bank, Indeed, MongoDB, Docusign, and Chime. The company reports that 2,000 marketers from more than 500 organizations currently utilize its platform daily to navigate this evolving digital landscape.
Sequoia partner Anas Biad expressed the firm’s confidence in Profound’s co-founders, James Cadwallader, a serial marketing entrepreneur, and Dylan Babbs, a former Uber software engineer. The two met at South Park Commons, a San Francisco community and early-stage fund established in 2016 by Ruchi Sanghvi, Facebook’s first female engineer, and Aditya Agarwal, former Dropbox CTO.
Sequoia views the rise of AI search as a “once-in-a-generation platform shift” for marketers. The firm believes Profound is strategically positioned to lead this transformation by enabling brands to monitor their visibility and that of their competitors within AI-generated results, and to produce new content optimized for these platforms. Biad commended Profound’s “remarkable” speed of execution, both in product development and customer acquisition, highlighting the founders’ ambition to build a “generational company.”
James Cadwallader, who previously founded the influencer marketing firm Kyra, characterized the current shift as a “Game of Thrones power shift” from traditional search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to a new era of AI search. His “obsession” with Perplexity began in early 2024, leading him to believe it was an “inflection point.” He stated, “once you’ve used AI to search, you quickly understand why our children won’t be using [Google’s] blue links.”
Cadwallader emphasized that this change extends beyond mere search, fundamentally altering the internet itself and becoming a “boardroom-level problem” for every marketer. He posited that if AI chatbots become the primary search method, brands risk losing direct visibility and control over their online appearance to consumers. This, he clarified, is not solely a marketing concern but a broader business challenge impacting revenue, customer acquisition, competitive positioning, and brand identity.
Addressing this challenge, according to Cadwallader, involves more than just monitoring AI output. It necessitates the creation and optimization of content specifically for a new audience: the AI bots themselves. “This is the first time ever you are creating content for bots,” he explained. “Brands are using Profound to create what humans would probably find boring—highly structured content that’s designed for bots to consume, like a game of telephone.”
Profound’s platform tracks how major AI models—including ChatGPT, Grok, Meta’s Llama, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and DeepSeek—surface brand mentions. Cadwallader noted significant and frequent variations across these models, likening the tracking process to “tracking a new species.”
The platform then leverages advanced reasoning models, such as OpenAI’s o3 and now GPT-5, to analyze these insights and generate actionable recommendations. These recommendations can range from gap analyses to suggested copy, guiding brands on creating new content, optimizing web pages, producing social posts, or even targeting media outlets that influence AI-generated answers.
Cadwallader stressed that Profound’s approach maintains “a human in the loop,” aiming not to replace marketers but to enhance their efficiency. He claimed that tasks previously requiring a team of ten can now be accomplished entirely within the Profound platform.
The scope of the challenge has already broadened beyond traditional marketing functions, encompassing “a PR challenge, a content challenge, even a customer support challenge,” as the AI models develop “opinions” that reflect internet sentiment back to users. This expansive view underpins Profound’s ambitious vision, which extends far beyond conventional SEO.
Cadwallader envisions a future where transactions occur directly within AI assistants, eliminating the need for users to navigate away with a single click. This potential shift poses competitive threats even to industry giants like Amazon. He cited Salesforce’s disruption of cloud software in the early 2000s as an inspiration, illustrating “just how big you can go” with a transformative approach.
