{"id":849045,"date":"2026-09-15T21:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T21:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849045\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T21:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T21:50:08","slug":"aeo-startup-profound-hits-unicorn-valuation-raises-180m-series-d-7-months-after-last-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849045\/","title":{"rendered":"AEO startup Profound hits unicorn valuation, raises $180M Series D 7 months after last round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tryprofound.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Profound<\/a>, which builds marketing software to help brands appear in AI search results, on Tuesday said it has raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, less than seven months after it raised a $96 million Series C.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins led the round, and existing investors \u2014 including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and South Park Commons \u2014 also participated.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Launched two years ago, Profound started as an analytics platform, and has since expanded to help companies research and create marketing strategies. The startup helps businesses understand how AI helps consumers discover their brands. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s part of a wave of startups in the <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/podcast\/your-seo-strategy-is-optimized-for-a-search-engine-that-no-longer-exists\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GEO\/AEO space<\/a> (generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization, respectively), where companies try to find ways to surface their products in the AI systems customers are increasingly using for search. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company says its revenue has increased by 3x in the past six months, and it now has more than 1,000 enterprise customers, which include Comcast, The Est\u00e9e Lauder Companies, and Walmart.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Profound, which builds marketing software to help brands appear in AI search results, on Tuesday said it has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,158,358985,15879],"class_list":["post-849045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-generative-engine-optimization","tag-in-brief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}