Kana, an AI-native marketing platform founded by serial entrepreneurs Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya, has raised $15 million in seed funding to help marketing teams accelerate growth and automate administrative work through agentic AI. The round was led by Mayfield following an initial period of formation and product development inside super{set}, an AI-focused startup studio based in San Francisco.
Kana’s platform deploys purpose-built AI agents designed for modern marketers and media companies. These agents integrate directly with existing marketing and media systems, harnessing first-party data and business context to automate legacy workflows and improve decision-making. The company emphasizes augmented intelligence, allowing users to review, approve, and refine AI-generated outputs before deployment to maintain quality and oversight.
The company said chief marketing officers face mounting pressure to adopt AI-driven growth strategies while simultaneously reducing costs. At the same time, marketing technology stacks have grown increasingly complex, first-party data often remains siloed, and platforms such as Google and Meta offer declining transparency into campaign performance. Kana aims to address these challenges by automating repetitive tasks, including media planning, RFP responses, reporting, dashboard analysis, and campaign optimization.
Leveraging proprietary Just-In-Time Data Integration technology, Kana connects to existing systems without requiring disruptive infrastructure changes. The platform structures campaign performance data, customer insights, and broader business context dynamically, then deploys domain-specific AI agents to execute tasks in minutes or hours rather than days or months.
Early customer use cases include automated media planning based on historical performance and current conditions; real-time campaign optimization with recommended next best actions; synthetic data-driven market research and expansion modeling; generation of synthetic data from first-party seed data to enhance targeting and personalization; RFP and proposal automation; and Answer Engine Optimization tools that help brands improve visibility in AI-generated responses by producing structured, reviewable content.
Kana marks the fourth company co-founded by Chavez and Vaidya. The duo previously launched Rapt, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2007, and Krux, acquired by Salesforce for $700 million in 2016. They also co-founded super{set}, which saw one of its portfolio companies, Habu, acquired by LiveRamp in 2024.
The new capital will support expanded hiring across engineering, product, and go-to-market teams as Kana scales its AI-driven marketing platform from its San Francisco headquarters.
KEY QUOTES
“Modern marketers and media companies know they need to invest in AI, but too many of the available alternatives are tools and infrastructure in search of a specific business purpose. Kana provides a ‘third path’ by engineering custom agentic applications that solve specific marketing and data challenges in a matter of minutes or hours, rather than days or months. By understanding their priorities, Kana meets marketers where they are, integrates seamlessly with the tech stacks they already use, and activates outputs and outcomes their team can see, control, and approve before anything goes live.”
Tom Chavez, Co-Founder And CEO, Kana
“Kana is reimagining modern marketing by deploying purpose-built AI agents that actually do the work. At Mayfield, we’re a people-first firm, and Tom and Vivek embody what we look for in founders. They’ve spent their careers solving the hardest problems in marketing, compounding expertise with each company they build. We’re proud to partner with them as they create the intelligent layer that will power AI-native marketing teams.”
Navin Chadda, Managing Partner, Mayfield
