There’s a quiet panic spreading through marketing departments, and it starts with the same question: “Why isn’t our brand showing up in ChatGPT?” Welcome to the next search paradigm, where it’s not about ten blue links anymore. It’s about the answer. AI doesn’t “rank” you. It remembers you, or forgets you entirely.
That’s the game Profound just walked into. Not with a whisper. With a $20 million Series A war chest, a rocket strapped to their back, and a map no one else had the guts to draw. Led by Kleiner Perkins with NVentures, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Saga VC, and South Park Commons joining the charge, this wasn’t a hype play. It was a bet on clarity in a market fogged with confusion.
So let’s get real. James Cadwallader (Co-Founder and CEO) and Dylan Babbs (Co-Founder and CTO) didn’t invent Answer Engine Optimization. But they’re the ones who made it make sense. James, fresh out of his stint at Kyra and retooled by South Park Commons, knows brand mechanics like a trader knows volatility. Dylan? A map and data craftsman from Uber who doesn’t guess, he models. Together, they launched Profound in 2024. Nine months later, they’re running point for the Fortune 100 trying to figure out why Perplexity is saying one thing while Copilot’s saying another.
Profound’s platform is what happens when you stop waiting for AI search to explain itself, and start interrogating it like it owes you money. Brands use it to see how they show up in tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot. But more importantly, they measure, fix, and grow their presence across those systems with agent-level insights, crawler behavior analytics, and a real-time pulse on what people are actually asking.
We’re talking over 100 million AI queries processed every month. Thousands of marketers already on board. A new self-serve tier, Profound Lite, launched at $499/month for startups. And a customer list that includes Zapier, MongoDB, Chime, Ramp, Indeed, and Workable. This isn’t a pilot phase. This is air traffic control.
And here’s the kicker, AI is now responsible for ~10% of referral traffic across the web. By 2027? That number is projected to cross 50%, driving $2.5 trillion in commerce. Let that sink in. We’re watching the birth of the agentic internet. Profound isn’t trying to ride that wave. They’re laying track for it.
To the brands still obsessing over SEO rankings while ChatGPT is stealing your customer’s last click, James Cadwallader and Dylan Babbs just gave you a heads-up wrapped in a business case. You don’t need visibility. You need Profound visibility.
