Marketing is one of the few functions that no industry can afford to overlook, which explains the influx of AI-powered marketing tools being aggressively promoted to marketers today. From social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to major players such as Microsoft and Google, as well as content-generation startups like Jasper and Copy. ai, many offer AI-driven tools promising to simplify marketers’ jobs in countless ways. This made me a bit puzzled to encounter yet another marketing AI startup entering the market: San Francisco-based Kana, which recently emerged from stealth mode with a suite of AI agents designed for data analysis, audience targeting, campaign management, customer engagement, media planning, and optimizing AI chatbots. The startup secured $15 million in a seed round led by Mayfield. However, Kana possesses an advantage that many marketing startups lack today: its co-founders, Tom Chavez (CEO; pictured above right) and Vivek Vaidya (CTO; pictured above left), bring over 25 years of experience in building marketing technology. Kana is actually their fourth venture after Rapt (acquired by Microsoft in 2008), Krux (bought by Salesforce in 2016), and the startup studio super{set}, where Kana was incubated for nine months. Describing this as a “wondrous” period for innovation, Chavez highlighted a clear opportunity to leverage their deep experience alongside modern AI technology to tackle current challenges. “We see a market that’s crying out for solutions that meet this moment […] We understand the space deeply, having been immersed in it arguably a little too long; truly standing in our customers’ pain, ” he told TechCrunch. Kana’s solution revolves around “loosely coupled” AI agents that can be customized quickly, integrated into existing marketing software, and operate concurrently on various tasks. For instance, a marketer might upload a media brief that Kana’s agents would analyze to identify campaign objectives, determine target audiences, and incorporate inventory and market research data to refine the strategy.

The platform includes autonomous campaign tracking, optimization, and reporting features. In addition to these agents, Kana provides synthetic data generation to supplement third-party data for purposes such as market research and audience targeting. Chavez argued this approach could help companies reduce reliance on costly third-party data, fill data gaps, and enable faster testing across platforms to sharpen marketing strategies. Importantly, Kana maintains human oversight, allowing marketers to approve AI actions, provide feedback, and adjust agent workflows as their needs evolve. Chavez and Vaidya stressed the platform’s flexibility as a key strength, contending that the capacity to deploy, tailor, and create new agents in real-time empowers marketers to achieve campaign results faster than with traditional systems. Looking ahead, the startup views this adaptability as both its competitive edge and barrier against established firms and similar startups developing comparable products. “We have the opportunity not to create bespoke solutions, but to highly tailor and configure these solutions to meet customers where they are. Larger companies just are never going to get there, ” Chavez explained. “We live in a world which allows us to explore a third option [with customers]: not build, not buy, but build with — build with in a way which is supported, ” Vaidya added. “We can move with insane speed that these big companies just cannot. And that’s our advantage. ” Kana plans to use the new funding to grow its teams in engineering, product, and go-to-market functions. Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha is joining the company’s board.