Passionfroot raises $15M to grow B2B creator marketplace in the US
▼ Summary
– Passionfroot, a German startup connecting B2B creators with brands, raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Insight Partners.
– The company is expanding to the U.S. by opening an office in New York and hiring more employees, with co-founder Jen Phan relocating there.
– Passionfroot’s revenue increased 13 times over the past year, and it has worked with clients like ElevenLabs, Figma, and Replit.
– The startup launched an AI agent called Zest that helps brands create, execute, and monitor campaigns, as well as find suitable creators.
– Passionfroot has paid at least $10 million to creators in the last 18 months and plans to add features for measuring AI citations and brand appearance in AI answers.
Passionfroot, a Berlin-based startup operating a marketplace that connects B2B creators with brands, has secured $15 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, signaling growing investor confidence in the niche of B2B creator commerce.
Rebecca Liu-Doyle, managing director at Insight Partners, noted that the startup is well-positioned as creators increasingly specialize and AI companies seek greater visibility. “Passionfroot has the perfect dynamics on both sides to warrant a true marketplace for B2B creators,” she said in a call. “On the demand side, there is increasing consumerization of the way B2B brands go to market. That’s a product of, in part, AI technology requiring evangelism, narrative building, and education. On the supply side, there are people who have real expertise, understand a market deeply, and want to create quality content.”
With this capital, co-founder and CEO Jen Phan is relocating to New York, where Passionfroot will establish an office to spearhead its U. S. expansion. The company is also opening a location in São Paulo and scaling its current team of 15 employees.
Phan explained that as AI accelerates product development, brands are turning to creators to cut through the noise. “Every head of marketing or growth leader I’m talking to is saying really the same thing: AI is commoditizing software and flooding every category with new products, features, and launches. It’s incredibly crowded and noisy,” she said. “That is why B2B buyers are going to channels like LinkedIn, a creator’s Substack, or a podcast on YouTube to discover new products and tools.”
Over the past year, Passionfroot reports 13x revenue growth and has onboarded notable clients including ElevenLabs, Figma, Replit, Framer, and Gamma.
Since its last funding round in 2024, the startup launched an AI agent called Zest, which assists brands in creating, executing, and monitoring campaign performance. According to Passionfroot, Zest can also identify suitable creators both on and off the platform for a brand’s marketing strategy.
The company relies on a proprietary creator graph built from data on reach and performance across thousands of campaigns. It also provides a wallet feature that allows companies to pay creators globally and track their spending. Passionfroot claims it has distributed at least $10 million to creators on its platform in the last 18 months.
Looking ahead, Passionfroot is developing tools to help clients measure how campaigns influence AI citations and how their brand appears in AI-generated answers. The startup also plans to build AI features for creators, including monetization tips and content suggestions.
This funding arrives as other creator platforms like Substack and Beehiiv push to improve monetization options. Beehiiv recently launched a community and ad marketplace, while Substack introduced subscriber-only perks within newsletters.
The Series A round also included participation from existing investors Creandum, Supernode Global, and s16vc. To date, Passionfroot has raised over $21 million in total.
(Source: TechCrunch)