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

Views on sponsored YouTube videos continue to climb — up 28% year-over-year — while the number of sponsored uploads has surged by 54% in the first half of 2025, according to new data from Tubefilter. At the same time, creator-driven ad spend continues to rise and, in some areas, is even projected to outperform traditional media channels.

Riding that momentum, Agentio, a platform that connects brands with YouTube creators for sponsored content, has secured its third consecutive funding round: a $40 million Series B. The new investment is led by consumer-focused VC firm Forerunner, with participation from Benchmark, Craft Ventures, AlleyCorp, Antler, and Starting Line. This brings Agentio’s total funding to $56 million and values the company at $340 million.

Founded in 2023 by CEO Arthur Leopold, formerly president at Cameo, and CTO Jonathan Meyers, a former Spotify engineer, Agentio has grown fivefold since its previous funding announcement in late 2024.

Image Credits: Agentio

The platform says brands are seeing standout performance through their campaigns on Agentio. Apparel company Bombas, for example, reportedly achieved a 5.3x increase in return on ad spend and a 90% net-new customer rate compared to other video ad channels. Agentio also claims that advertisers who typically need 6 months to deploy budgets across Meta or Google can spend more efficiently — and more profitably — in a shorter time frame on Agentio.

Leopold says the platform’s automation and AI matching capabilities are the key.

“Before Agentio, brands struggled to scale creator partnerships. Our goal from day one has been to use AI to automate the ad-buying process and deliver better outcomes. As AI-generated content floods feeds, brands understand that creators’ real audience trust is irreplaceable,” he told TechCrunch.

The company didn’t share exact payout data but noted that creators have collectively earned “tens of millions.” Over the past year, creators joining Agentio reportedly doubled their brand-partnership earnings within six months, and the average time to receive the first campaign bid has dropped from 45–50 days to less than 24 hours — a result of improving creator–brand matching at scale.

Image Credits: Agentio

On the product side, Agentio has leaned heavily into AI. The team has built reasoning-model capabilities and multimodal tools, including:

• an AI-powered campaign manager for marketers
• an automated brand-safety matching system (launched last year)
• a new AI content-review tool that checks whether a creator’s draft meets the campaign’s brief and safety requirements

Meyers explained that the new review system eliminates the need for brands to manually watch every submitted video manually, dramatically speeding up campaign rollout.

Agentio’s matching model also broadens the types of creators a brand might consider. For instance, instead of recommending fitness influencers for a supplements brand, Agentio’s data might also surface outdoor creators whose audiences align with the product.

While the majority of Agentio’s participating brands are consumer-focused, the company says B2B demand is also rising.

After focusing heavily on YouTube for two years, Agentio is now expanding beyond Google’s platform. It is beta-testing Meta integrations, especially for Reels, using Meta’s partnership ad formats. With many creators already active across multiple social platforms, Agentio says it can scale campaigns more fluidly across channels.

In 2026, Agentio aims to add support for TikTok and Snapchat, further widening its creator marketplace.

Forerunner managing partner Eurie Kim said the firm had monitored Agentio for over a year, introducing the startup to brands in its portfolio before investing.

“Their ability to unlock multiple channels signaled to us that Agentio could become the AI-powered media-planning platform of the future, built around the most valuable asset in modern marketing: creators.”

Agentio has grown from 12 to 35 employees over the past year and expects its team to surpass 100 employees over the next 12 months.