Multiply Secures $9.5M to Develop AI Agents
▼ Summary
– Multiply, a San Francisco startup, has emerged from stealth with $9.5 million in funding to address the problem of “decaying ads” in B2B marketing.
– The company’s AI system uses data from sales calls, CRM pipelines, and deal outcomes to create and continuously optimize ad campaigns on platforms like Google and LinkedIn.
– Its platform employs a suite of specialized AI agents to run hundreds of parallel experiments, automatically scaling winning ad variations and cutting losers.
– Multiply operates on a hybrid AI-plus-human agency model, where AI handles optimization and human media buyers provide brand oversight and compliance review.
– The company is positioning its infrastructure for future AI-driven ad formats, like potential ChatGPT advertising, arguing its learning systems can adapt to these new platforms.
Every B2B marketing team faces a familiar and frustrating cycle. A campaign launches with fresh creative and precise targeting, only to see its performance gradually decline as audiences disengage and click-through rates fall. This inevitable decay prompts a costly and time-consuming agency refresh, restarting the loop. Matt Jayson, co-founder of the newly launched startup Multiply, identifies this as a fundamental structural flaw in digital advertising. He argues that campaigns begin losing effectiveness the moment they go live because the feedback loop connecting customer insights to ad messaging is far too slow.
Multiply has just emerged from stealth operations, announcing a significant $9.5 million funding round to address this very problem. The investment was spearheaded by Mayfield, with additional participation from Sorenson Capital, Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, and Google’s VP of Labs and Gemini, Josh Woodward. Executives from several prominent tech companies, including HubSpot, Braze, and Brex, also contributed.
The company’s core proposition is that businesses already possess the data required for superior advertising, they simply fail to leverage it effectively. Critical insights from sales call recordings, CRM pipeline data, and information on closed deals contain the precise language and reasons customers ultimately buy. Multiply’s platform integrates directly with these sources, employing a suite of specialized AI agents to transform raw data into perpetually optimizing ad campaigns on platforms like Google Search and LinkedIn.
This system operates by running hundreds of structured experiments weekly, automatically testing variations in messaging, audience targeting, and creative elements. High-performing combinations are scaled, while underperformers are cut, creating a continuous learning cycle. The AI architecture is composed of five distinct agents, each with a dedicated function. A Customer Insights Agent analyzes sales conversations to personalize ad copy, while an ICP Agent examines won deals to refine audience targeting. A Quality Score Agent optimizes for Google’s ranking signals, a Creative Design Agent refreshes visual assets weekly, and an A/B Testing Agent manages the experiments to identify winning strategies.
Human oversight remains a crucial component. Media buyers provide brand governance and compliance reviews, forming the “hybrid” element of Multiply’s AI-plus-human agency model. Jayson, whose background includes user acquisition at Google and a role as Head of Product at Brex, founded the company to bridge the gap he witnessed firsthand. The nuanced insights from sales floors, specific customer objections, competitor comparisons, and resonant language, rarely flow back into advertising channels with sufficient speed.
His co-founder and CTO, Ashish Warty, brings extensive product and engineering experience from leadership roles at HackerOne, Airship, and Dropbox. “Modern companies already have all the data needed to create radically better ads,” Jayson stated. “Sales conversations, CRM systems, and pipeline outcomes reveal exactly why customers buy, yet those insights rarely make their way into ad campaigns fast enough.”
The company’s strategy also looks toward the future of advertising formats. Multiply’s infrastructure is being designed to adapt to emerging channels, such as potential advertising within ChatGPT. The premise is that the adaptive learning systems built for search and social media can extend into new, conversational AI-driven ad environments as they develop.
Patrick Salyer, a Partner at Mayfield and a member of Multiply’s board, commented on the shift he sees in the industry. “There is a major shift happening in the $50 billion B2B advertising market. Service-as-Software is redefining how companies grow, and Multiply has built the first AI model for B2B advertising.” This market size estimate originates from Mayfield’s analysis.
Ultimately, Multiply’s thesis centers on a structural weakness in the traditional agency approach: the bottleneck isn’t creative execution, but the velocity of learning and adaptation. The question now is whether their AI-driven stack, backed by $9.5 million, can accelerate that feedback loop more effectively than established players can evolve. The answer will be found in the performance metrics of their client campaigns moving forward.
(Source: The Next Web)
