Agentio secures $40 million from Forerunner as it scales its creator marketplace beyond YouTube

Summary

Views on sponsored videos on YouTube have risen 28% year-on-year, and the number of sponsored videos has grown by 54% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, according to a report from Tubefilter. What’s more, ad spend through creator channels has been steadily rising and is even set to outperform traditional media in some cases. Buoyed by these signals, Agentio, a 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, AlleyCorp, Antler, and Starting Line. This round brings Agentio’s total fundraising to $56 million, valuing the company at $340 million. The startup was founded in 2023 by CEO Arthur Leopold, former president at 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. Image Credits: Agentio The startup said that brands have seen impressive gains in their campaigns on Agentio. For example, the company said that Bombas, a socks and apparel brand, saw 5.3x better return on ad spend and a 90% net new customer rate from Agentio campaigns as compared to video ad spending on other platforms. Agentio also said that brands that typically take over six months to spend their ad budgets on Meta and Google, could do it in a few months through Agentio’s platform with better returns. “The challenge historically before Agentio was for brands to partner with creators at scale. Our belief since we founded the company has been to use AI to automate the ad buying process for brands to get the best outcomes. As AI content has started to proliferate in people’s feeds, we are seeing that brands realize that this level of trust that creators have with their audiences is unbeatable,” Leopold told TechCrunc...