Kleiner Perkins invests in Profound
Funding Provisional 93% confidence first seen
Profound raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation, with Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins jointly leading the round. The reporting says the new capital will be used to post-train or customize AI models for marketing use cases and to build a benchmark for measuring how well those models automate tasks. This matters as Kleiner Perkins is backing Profound’s push to help brands improve visibility and citations in AI services/search.
The deal
Profound $180M Late stage · announced 15 Sep 2026
Investors Sequoia Capital Kleiner Perkins
Deal terms as reported in the coverage below.
Decision brief
- What changed
- Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, led jointly by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. According to the coverage, the company will use the funding to post-train or customize AI models for marketing use cases and to build a benchmark for measuring how well those models automate those tasks.
- Why it matters
- This financing signals that major investors see commercial value in tools that help brands improve discovery and citation inside AI services, not just traditional search. For business leaders, that makes AI visibility and measurement a more concrete operating area: marketing teams may gain new ways to influence brand presence in AI-generated answers, while technology teams may face new integration and model-customization choices. The explicit plan to build benchmarking around marketing-task automation also suggests the category is moving toward measurable performance rather than experimentation alone.
- Evidence
- The summary is supported by a single SiliconANGLE report stating that Profound raised $180 million in a Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, with Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins jointly leading the round. That same report says the capital will fund post-training or customization of AI models for marketing use cases and the creation of a benchmark for measuring automation performance.
- What remains uncertain
- This coverage does not verify how differentiated Profound’s product is versus other AI marketing or search-visibility tools, nor does it show customer adoption, revenue, or benchmark methodology. It is also unclear how much impact post-trained marketing models can actually have on brand visibility across third-party AI services, since platform behavior and citation practices may be outside Profound’s control.
- Monitor next
- Watch for Profound to release its marketing-automation benchmark or disclose customer results showing measurable gains in brand visibility or citations across major AI services.
Analytical support, not advice — assumptions and open questions stated above.