Ex-Fluidstack growth lead lands $1.2M pre-seed to bring AI creators to B2B marketing

Astute has raised $1.2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round and used the money to launch its B2B creator platform. The company is pitching itself as the first “B2B new media” company, aimed at a world it says now has more than 20 million independent channels.

The idea comes straight from founder Vida Stanić’s own frustration. Before starting Astute, she was a growth lead at Fluidstack and spent evenings digging through Substack for contact details that creators had not posted. She says she would contact hundreds of creators, then wait weeks for a single reply. Astute is meant to compress that whole mess into software.

The product uses two AI agents. One is built for creators — newsletter writers, podcast hosts and social accounts — and handles scheduling, contracts and follow-ups. The other is for B2B companies, scanning more than a million creator posts each minute, surfacing relevant mentions, building outreach plans and helping land editorial spots, interviews, podcast features, ads and event partnerships. It also tracks impressions, conversions, brand score and visibility in AI search engines.

Stanić is not selling this as a nice-to-have. She argues that B2B marketing has been stuck on ads, PR and SEO while audiences have shifted to newsletters, podcasts, LinkedIn and X. Her view is that creator marketing already became a giant budget line in consumer brands, and B2B is next. Astute is also betting that AI agents shopping and researching for users will end up leaning on the same creator content companies are trying to influence.

The catch is that Astute is walking into a space with a head start already in place. Berlin-based Passionfroot raised $15 million in a Series A on July 22, 2026, after a 2024 seed round, and says its AI agent, Zest, runs creator campaigns end to end. Astute has its first public funding and no disclosed revenue yet. The round was backed by Flyer One Ventures, Silicon Gardens, Marathon Fund, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator and several strategic angels.