Marketing is an essential function that virtually every industry must prioritize, which explains the current flood of AI-powered marketing tools being presented to professionals. From major social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to established players such as Microsoft and Google, and even content-focused startups like Jasper and Copy.ai, numerous AI solutions promise to simplify a marketer’s workload in countless ways.

Given this crowded landscape, it was somewhat surprising to see another AI marketing startup emerge. San Francisco-based Kana has recently launched from stealth mode with a suite of AI agents designed to handle data analysis, audience targeting, campaign management, customer engagement, media planning, and optimization for AI chatbots. The company has secured $15 million in a seed funding round led by Mayfield.

What sets Kana apart is the extensive experience of its founders. Co-founders Tom Chavez, who serves as CEO, and Vivek Vaidya, the CTO, have over 25 years of experience building marketing technology. Kana represents their fourth venture together, following Rapt, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008, Krux, purchased by Salesforce in 2016, and the startup studio super{set}, where they incubated Kana for nine months.

Chavez described the present as a “wondrous” time for innovation, noting a clear opportunity to apply their deep expertise alongside modern AI capabilities to address persistent marketing challenges.

Kana’s approach centers on “loosely coupled” AI agents that can be customized in real time, integrated with existing marketing software, and assigned to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. For instance, a marketer could upload a media brief, and Kana’s agents would analyze it to identify campaign objectives, search for appropriate target audiences, and incorporate data from inventory and market research to refine the strategy further.

The platform includes built-in features for autonomous campaign tracking, optimization, and reporting. In addition to its AI agents, Kana provides synthetic data generation to supplement third-party data sources, supporting activities like market research and audience targeting.

According to Chavez, this synthetic data capability can help companies lower the costs associated with third-party data, address data gaps, and enable marketers to test strategies across various platforms more quickly and efficiently.

A key aspect of Kana’s design is keeping human oversight integral to the process. Marketers can review and approve the AI agents’ actions, provide feedback, and adjust the agents’ functions as needs evolve.

Both founders stressed the platform’s flexibility, highlighting that the ability to deploy, tailor, and develop new agents in real time allows marketers to achieve campaign results faster than with traditional systems.

Looking ahead, Kana views this adaptability as a core competitive advantage, enabling highly customized solutions for clients while differentiating the company from both larger incumbents and other startups in the space.

Chavez explained, “We have the opportunity, it’s 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.”

Vaidya added, “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. We can move with insane speed that these big companies just cannot. And that’s our advantage.”

Kana plans to use its new funding to expand hiring across engineering, product development, and go-to-market teams. Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha will join the company’s board.