AI-search visibility and marketing workflow agents
HQ: New York, New York, United States | Founded: 2024 | Employees: Not disclosed in the reviewed sources | Stage: $180M Series D at $1.8B announced September 2026 | Website: https://www.tryprofound.com/
James Cadwallader and Dylan Babbs founded Profound in 2024. Company seed and Series B posts identify their CEO and CTO roles and a New York engineering focus. Early products tracked brand mentions, sentiment, citations, and answer-engine performance. The February 2026 release introduced native Agents and training/ecosystem offerings.
The September Series D founder letter describes AI Marketer (Aim) and Context Manager, combining brand context, approvals, production, publication, and measurement. Named brands and adoption counts are company claims, not audited financials. The fetched newsroom release rendered inconsistent body content, so this profile relies on the readable founder letter for Series D terms and does not use the mismatched extraction as corroboration.
Profound tracks how brands appear in AI answers and builds marketing agents around that visibility data. After a $96M Series C in February 2026, its September founder announcement disclosed $180M Series D at $1.8B, led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Current positioning extends beyond monitoring into governed marketing execution.
Editorial assessment: monitoring is more valuable if teams can act on the findings, but measured visibility can vary with prompts and model behavior. Profound must show reliable business outcomes without promising control over independent answer engines.
Evidence boundary: financing announcements establish disclosed transactions, not audited operating performance. Unavailable headcount, margins, and retention are not estimated, and company claims remain attributed.
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