Profound raises $180M Series D at $1.8B to build an AI marketing platform

Profound said it raised $180 million in Series D funding at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Saga Ventures, Evantic, and South Park Commons. The New York AI marketing company is rolling out Aim (AI Marketer) so teams work from shared brand context instead of one-off chat prompts.

Same-day FINANCE primary that an AI marketing and AEO platform hit a $1.8 billion valuation on a $180 million Series D co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, with a product bet that shared brand context beats one-off chatbot prompts.

Profound, a New York AI marketing company, said it raised $180 million in Series D funding at a $1.8 billion valuation. Series D is a later-stage venture round — after seed, Series A, B, and C, not a first check. The company PRIMARY is Profound’s blog post “Building the AI platform for marketing,” live at filing and authored by James Cadwallader, co-founder and chief executive. The CMS stamp on that page may show 16 Sep 2026 depending on timezone. Bloomberg’s independent Sep 15, 2026 dispatch, by Rebecca Torrence at 11:30 AM UTC, is the same calendar window. Those two pages are the filing event. These are company and Bloomberg claims. This desk did not see the term sheet.

The round, as Profound tells it, was led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Saga Ventures, Evantic, and South Park Commons. Bloomberg independently calls Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins co-leads. File the $180 million, the $1.8 billion valuation, the two named leads, and those participants as Profound’s, with Bloomberg as independent corroboration of the raise, the valuation, and the co-lead wording. This desk is not inventing an ownership percentage or a check size. None was printed.

Prior capital, as Bloomberg has it: Profound was founded in 2024 and has raised over $335 million to date, including prior rounds. File the 2024 founding and the more-than-$335 million total as Bloomberg’s. This desk did not see a cap table and is not adding those earlier rounds on its own.

Product, as the company tells it: an AI marketing platform. Aim — also called AI Marketer — is meant to help every teammate work from the same brand context instead of typing one-off prompts into a chat box. Aim sits on Profound Context Manager, which holds organization-level and individual-level context, so a brand manager and a CMO can get different output from the same platform. Profound says it sits at the application layer, above interchangeable models. The company describes a loop: a plan, a brief, a first draft in the brand’s voice, a review from whoever signs off, publication to a CMS — a content-management system, the software that publishes a website — and a later report on what moved. File Aim, Context Manager, the shared-context pitch, and that publish loop as Profound’s. This desk did not run Aim.

Bloomberg’s read of the earlier product, still attributed: the software first launched with the ability to track how often AI models mention brands in response to user queries, what context they are mentioned in, and how they are described, as more people start web queries on AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini instead of a list of blue links. File that tracking job and those named surfaces as Bloomberg’s. This desk did not query those models.

Adoption claimed, company — attribute, do not independently certify: more than 2,500 brands; about a third of the Fortune 100; and the biggest agencies in the world. Named examples on the company post: Estée Lauder, Walmart, Zoom, Royal Bank of Canada, Stripe, Ramp, Cursor, and Figma. File those counts and those names as Profound’s. This desk did not count brands or interview the customers.

Named people: James Cadwallader, co-founder and chief executive, authored the company post. Bloomberg’s photo caption names Dylan Babbs as co-founder, with photography by Aaron Laserna. File those names and titles as theirs, via the company and Bloomberg. Cadwallader’s longer argument stays in Sources.

Event tease, company: a live look at Aim on September 30. File that date as Profound’s. This desk is not treating the tease as a product launch this filing can certify, and it did not sit in a preview.

Plain English for the rest of the card: Series D = later-stage venture funding after seed and Series A, B, and C. AEO = Answer Engine Optimization, how brands show up when people ask an AI for an answer instead of clicking blue-link search. CMS = content-management system, the software that publishes a website. Aim / AI Marketer = Profound’s agent meant to work from shared brand context. Context Manager = the company’s store of organization-level and individual-level brand context.

PRIMARY here: Profound’s company blog Series D post — Tier A company source, the original record, live at filing — plus Bloomberg’s 15 Sep 2026 independent Tier B corroboration. The $180 million Series D, the $1.8 billion valuation, the Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins leads, Lightspeed / Khosla / Saga / Evantic / South Park Commons, Aim and Context Manager, the shared-context / publish-to-CMS loop, the more-than-2,500 brands / about-a-third-of-the-Fortune-100 / named-customer lines, the Cadwallader authorship, the September 30 Aim look, the 2024 founding, the more-than-$335 million total, and the Babbs co-founder caption are company- or Bloomberg-attributed as named. Customer counts, product claims, and “plans to announce” timing stay attributed. NOT claimed: ARR, revenue, headcount, independently verified customer counts, that this desk tested Aim, a stock tip, or investment advice. Distinct from the already-filed branch-energy-33m-series-b, evvy-40m-series-b, decimal-ai-4m-seed, and salesforce-google-unify-agents.