• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Today

One executive from OpenAI, David Azose, and one now at Google, Sonia Pheneare, are angel investors in an emerging AI marketing platform called Evertune AI, a generative engine optimization (GEO) and AI marketing platform founded by former executives at The Trade Desk. When Pheneare initially invested in the company she worked at OpenAI.

Last month, the company announced raising a $15 million Series A funding round led by Felicis Ventures, along with several other angel investors.

Brian Stempeck, chief executive officer and co-founder at Evertune AI, left The Trade Desk in early 2021 and then in 2024 launched Evertune, which now works with companies such as Canada Goose. 

“Most people in the AI space spoke to brands and agencies about cost-cutting, time saving and efficiencies, but not many talked about how consumers find their brands,” Stempeck said.

The Series A funding will expand Evertune's AI marketing suite, as well as help brands improve their presence and visibility across AI-powered search models, from OpenAi to Gemini. 

Most companies in the space go to the consumer interface, he said, referring to how many companies scraping content.

Companies must connect to the artificial intelligence (AI) models to get the entire story and understand what the large language model (LLM) returns to the user. 

To get all the data required and understand how consumers feel about brands, Stempeck believes the platforms need to pay for the content and connect with the LLMs like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft through their APIs.

CBInsights analysts found in the firm's analysis of technology companies that raised more than $100 million in August that funding rounds show no indication of stopping -- but did see some degree of slowdown based on signals related to the AI market's momentum, strategic plays, and how the biggest private technology companies are growing bigger.

This slowdown of the funding is due to commerce moving to AI, allowing consumers to buy products through ChatGPT or Perplexity, he said. Advertising will come next to the AI models.

“It will become as important to brands as social media,” he said. “Today brands have tunnel vision, where this is just SEO part two. It’s more than that. This starts to influence content, ecommerce and advertising strategies.”

Evertune is not the only AI marketing platform that shows how brands surface in AI queries gaining venture-capital investments. Bluefish announced $20 million in series A funding in August.

“Consumer use is moving [from traditional search to AI search], and it reminds me of what we saw at The Trade Desk in 2017, 2018, where consumers moved from broadcast and cable into streaming,” Stempeck said. “It changed the entire experience of television.”