Skip to main content

Profound

Category: AI in Marketing

An AI visibility and optimization platform that helps brands track, analyze, and optimize how they appear in AI-generated answers across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Profound was founded in 2024. The company is led by James Cadwallader. Based in New York City, United States. Team size: 100-120. Total funding raised: $155.0M. Latest round: Series C ($96.0M, Feb 2026). Key investors include ["Lightspeed Venture Partners","Sequoia Capital","Kleiner Perkins","Khosla Ventures","NVIDIA NVentures"].

Founded
2024
Headquarters
New York City, United States
Team size
100-120
Total funding
$155.0M

Value proposition

Enables brands to measure and influence how AI answer engines describe and recommend them, combining analytics, content generation, and autonomous execution to close the loop between insight and action.

Products and solutions

["Answer Engine Insights","Agent Analytics","Conversation Explorer","Profound Agents (Workflows)","Query Fanouts Analysis","Visibility Dashboard"]

Unique value

Pioneered the Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) / Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) category; tracks millions of real prompts through front-end user interfaces (not APIs) for authentic AI behavior; autonomous agentic workflows.

Target customer

Enterprise marketing teams, Fortune 500 brands, B2B companies, digital marketing agencies, e-commerce retailers

Industries served

["Retail & E-commerce","Financial Services & Banking","B2B SaaS & Enterprise Software","Marketing Technology & Digital Advertising","Healthcare & Life Sciences","Consumer Packaged Goods","Technology & Telecommunications"]

Technology advantage

Proprietary Profound Index collects real conversations; three proprietary data vectors with real-time citation tracking; 'read/write' platform; state-of-the-art reasoning models leveraging billions of unique signals.

How they differentiate

Most well-funded and enterprise-focused AEO platform; proprietary Profound Index tracking real prompt volume data (not hypothetical); multi-engine coverage; autonomous agentic workflows; SOC 2 Type II certification.

Main competitors

["Scrunch AI","Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit","BrightEdge"]

Key partnerships

["Lightspeed Venture Partners","Sequoia Capital","Kleiner Perkins","NVIDIA NVentures","WordPress","Sanity CMS","Slack","Google Cloud Platform","Vercel","Netlify","Contentful","Amsive"]

Notable customers

["Target","Walmart","Ramp","MongoDB","U.S. Bank","Figma","DocuSign","Chime","Plaid","Wayfair","Brex","LG"]

Major milestones

["Launched August 2024 with $3.5M seed round led by Khosla Ventures","Series A ($20M) led by Kleiner Perkins in Jun 2025","Series B ($35M) led by Sequoia Capital in Aug 2025","Series C ($96M) led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in Feb 2026 (Unicorn Status)","Expanded globally with London office opening in Oct 2025"]

Growth metrics

Achieved unicorn status ($1B valuation) in 18 months; 700+ enterprise clients including 10% of Fortune 500 companies; grew to ~120 employees.

Market positioning

Enterprise-focused category leader in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) / Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) with unicorn status ($1B valuation), 700+ enterprise clients.

Geographic focus

North America (NYC), United Kingdom (London)

Patents and IP

No registered patents publicly disclosed as of February 2026

About James Cadwallader

Serial marketing entrepreneur; previously co-founded Kyra (2017), a data-driven influencer marketing agency serving Fortune 500 brands; met co-founder Dylan Babbs at South Park Commons startup incubator; launched Profound in August 2024; views AI-driven search as 'the biggest disruption in the history of capitalism'; pioneered the Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) category

Official website: