Profound hits $1.8B valuation as brands scramble to show up in AI search results

Two years ago, most CMOs were obsessing over Google’s blue links. Now they’re paying Profound to make sure ChatGPT mentions their brand in the right tone of voice. That shift just earned the New York-based startup a $1.8 billion valuation. Profound closed a $180 million Series D round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, nearly doubling the $1 billion valuation it reached during its Series C just seven months earlier, in February 2026. Total capital raised since the company’s founding in 2024 now exceeds $335 million. What Profound actually does The company has coined its own category: answer engine optimization, or AEO. Instead of optimizing web pages so Google ranks them higher, Profound helps brands monitor and improve how they appear inside AI-generated answers, across tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. The platform tracks three things: how often a brand shows up in AI responses, what sentiment those responses carry, and where the brand is positioned relative to competitors. Then it recommends content strategies to nudge those results in a more favorable direction. Profound currently serves more than 700 enterprise customers, including roughly 10...