JC
James Cadwallader
Co-Founder & CEO
Previously Co-Founder at Kyra
Serial marketing entrepreneur; co-founded Kyra (2017), a data-driven influencer marketing agency serving Fortune 500 brands, before starting Profound.
Profound is an AI visibility and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) platform that helps enterprise brands understand and optimize how they appear inside generative AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. The platform provides analytics on brand mentions, citations, and visibility across AI answer engines.
Profound is an AI visibility and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) platform that helps enterprise brands understand and optimize how they appear inside generative AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. The platform provides analytics on brand mentions, citations, and visibility across AI answer engines.
James Cadwallader (CEO) and Dylan Babbs (CTO) met at South Park Commons in New York and founded Profound in 2024. Cadwallader had previously co-founded Kyra, a data-driven influencer marketing agency, while Babbs spent four years at Uber working on maps and location services. They started Profound to address the paradigm shift from traditional SEO toward optimization for generative AI answer engines.
Profound raised a $96 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, surpassing 700 enterprise customers including ~10% of the Fortune 500.
Profound raised $35M Series B led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Saga VC and South Park Commons.
Sequoia Capital published a partnership note explaining its investment thesis around Profound and the shift from SEO to generative AI visibility.
SV Angel publicly congratulated Profound on its $35M Series B announcement, framing the SEO-to-GEO shift as a major paradigm change.
Profound announced a $20M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins with Khosla Ventures, NVIDIA NVentures, Saga Ventures, South Park Commons and SV Angel to build out its AEO platform.
Co-Founder & CEO
Previously Co-Founder at Kyra
Serial marketing entrepreneur; co-founded Kyra (2017), a data-driven influencer marketing agency serving Fortune 500 brands, before starting Profound.
Co-Founder & CTO
Previously Design Engineer at Uber
Design engineer focused on maps, navigation, and data visualization; spent four years at Uber redesigning navigation systems and building design system components before co-founding Profound.
$151M raised total