Views of sponsored videos on YouTube have increased by 28% year-on-year, and the number of sponsored videos in the first half of 2025 has increased by 54% year-on-year. A report from TubeFilterIn addition, advertising spend has been incurred through manufacturer channels, continuously increasing And Poised to outperform even traditional media In some cases.
Encouraged by these signs, agentsA startup that connects brands with YouTube creators for sponsored videos has raised its third funding round of $40 million in as many years. The Series B round is led by consumer-focused VC Forerunner with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Craft Ventures, AlliCorp, Antler, and Starting Line. The total amount raised by agents in this round has reached $56 million, valuing the company at $340 million.
The startup was founded in 2023 by CEO Arthur Leopold, former president of celebrity talent marketplace Cameo, and CTO Jonathan Meyers, a former Spotify engineer who led the company’s automated content marketing team. Since its last funding round in November 2024, Agentio has grown fivefold.
The startup said brands have seen impressive gains in their campaigns on Agentio. For example, the company said socks and apparel brand Bombas saw a 5.3x better return on ad spend and a 90% net new customer rate from Agentio campaigns compared to video ad spend on other platforms. Agentio also said that brands that typically take more than six months to spend their ad budget on Meta and Google can do so in a matter of months through Agentio’s platform with better returns.
“Historically the challenge facing Agentio was for brands to partner with creators at scale. Since the company’s founding we have believed in using AI to automate the ad buying process for brands to get the best results. As AI content begins to proliferate in people’s feeds, we are seeing brands realize that this level of trust that creators have with their audiences is unbeatable,” Leopold said. told TechCrunch over a call.
The company did not provide exact figures but said it has now paid out millions of dollars to creators. It says that over the past year, creators who have joined Agentio have been able to more than double their brand partnership earnings within six months. Also, the time it takes creators to receive the first bid has increased from 45-50 days last year to less than a day this year. This is also a side effect of platform scaling – having enough supply and demand to facilitate faster matching and higher earnings.
On the product side, Agentio has focused on integrating logic models and multimodal understanding. With the former, it has created a campaign manager that helps marketers craft campaigns using AI, a feature that is now table stakes on all advertising platforms.
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Last year, Agentio launched an AI-powered feature to match brands with creators who could match their brand safety standards. This year, the company shipped an AI-powered content review feature that can check drafts submitted by creators and determine if it fits the brief and is safe to upload.
“Previously, brands had to assign one person to watch each creator’s video to make sure they were following the campaign brief,” Meyers said. “Now, our agent checks all these parameters which saves time for brands and allows them to run and scale campaigns faster.”
He also mentioned that due to AI and better profiling of both brands and creators, the company has not had to limit itself to any particular type of creator or company. Through their data matching, it has matched brands with creators who might have traditionally been overlooked. For example, a health supplement brand will typically work with fitness and wellness creators. However, agents may suggest that they also target creators who work outdoors. While most of the brands served by Agentio are consumer-focused, the startup said it has also started seeing demand from organizations in the B2B sector.
After spending two years largely serving YouTube, the company is also beta testing the meta platform, focusing primarily on video formats like Reels. The company will facilitate connections and usage between creators and brands Meta Partnership Ads Which does not appear on the main feed to promote a product or service.
The company said that because many of the creators on Agentio already have a presence on social networks like Instagram, it is able to scale campaigns more easily. In 2026, it plans to support more platforms like TikTok and Snap.
Yuri Kim, managing partner of Forerunner, said the VC firm had been tracking Agentio for more than a year as the startup serviced other companies in its portfolio.
“We’ve been tracking Agentio for over a year, building relationships with Arthur and Jonathan by introducing them to some of our biggest brands, who immediately became customers and champions of the platform. Unlocking multiple channels was a clear signal to us that Agentio could be the AI-powered media planning platform of the future, starting with their most valuable marketing asset of the future: creators,” Kim told TechCrunch over email.
Over the past year, Agentio said, he has grown his team from 12 employees to 35, and he plans to expand his headcount to more than 100 in the next year.
