Profound was founded in 2024 in New York City by James Cadwallader (CEO) and Dylan Babbs (CTO). It quickly gained traction after launch, securing a seed round of about $3.5 million. In mid 2025, the company raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Khosla Ventures and NVIDIA Ventures. In August 2025, Profound closed a $35 million Series B round led by Sequoia, bringing its total funding to approximately $58.5 million.
The company positions itself in the marketing tech and SaaS space, specifically focused on the emerging domain of Answer Engine Optimization or Generative Engine Optimization. Profound helps brands ensure they are visible, cited, and accurately represented in responses from AI based answer engines such as ChatGPT and Google AI.
Capabilities and Technology
Profound offers a suite of tools and modules across several core functions:
Answer Engine Insights: Tracks how often AI and large language models mention a brand, what content is being cited, and how the brand is portrayed in AI search or answer engines.
Agent Analytics: Monitors how AI systems access and interpret content on websites, helping brands understand how their content is being viewed by AI systems.
Prompt Volumes and Trending Prompts: Tracks what people are asking AI systems, including topics, keywords, and volumes, so brands can align content with real user queries.
Actions: Generates content strategies and briefs optimized for AI visibility, offering guidance on topics, headings, keywords, and facts that AI systems are already citing.
Additional features include integrations, monitoring dashboards, workflows, and templates tailored to gain AI citations. Profound supports multiple AI platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and others. The company is SOC 2 Type II certified.
Recent Developments
Closed a $35 million Series B in August 2025 led by Sequoia to scale its product, expand features, support enterprise customers, and pursue international growth.
Launched Profound Actions in July 2025, allowing customers to turn insights into actionable content briefs and strategies.
Expanded coverage to multiple AI platforms, including Grok, Claude, Meta AI, and Google AI Overviews.
Released new features such as Bulk Keyword Analysis, Keyword Research, demographic information for Prompt Volumes, and optimization tools for drafts and uploads.
Formed a partnership with G2 to embed Profound’s AI visibility data into G2’s workflows.
Clients and Industries
Profound serves enterprise and high growth brands. Publicly named clients include Ramp, US Bank, MongoDB, Chime, DocuSign, and Indeed. The company serves industries such as financial services, B2B SaaS, retail, and consumer technology.
Differentiators and Strengths
One of the earliest platforms built specifically for AI and answer engine visibility. While many companies focus on SEO, Profound focuses on how AI and large language models cite and surface content through generative answers.
Combines monitoring tools such as citation tracking and prompt volumes with execution tools like content briefs and optimization templates.
Rapid product development and support for emerging AI platforms in a fast evolving landscape.
Potential Limitations and Challenges
Because AI answer engines are probabilistic, there is volatility in citations, which means consistent visibility requires continuous monitoring and adjustments.
As a young company, scaling globally and managing localization and regulatory differences present challenges.
Larger incumbents in SEO and content analytics could expand into this domain and increase competition.
Analyst Coverage and Recognition
Profound has been covered in startup and marketing technology media, highlighted for its rapid funding milestones and position in the emerging AI search visibility space. Its partnership with G2 adds industry credibility.
