📊 Bluefish Scores $20M to Navigate the Wild West of AI Marketing

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When Adidas wants to know what ChatGPT is saying about their latest sneaker drop, they don't just cross their fingers and hope for the best anymore. They turn to Bluefish.

The two-year-old startup just closed a $20 million Series A led by NEA, with backing from Salesforce Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, Swift Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta. It's a validation of something most Fortune 500 CMOs are just beginning to grasp: Traditional channels no longer give brands full control of their narrative.

"We're living through the biggest shift in consumer discovery since Google," says Alex Sherman, Bluefish's CEO and co-founder of PromoteIQ (acquired by Microsoft in 2019).

The New Frontier of Brand Control

Here's the uncomfortable truth keeping enterprise marketers up at night: AI platforms like ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Google's Bard are increasingly becoming the first—and sometimes only—touchpoint between brands and consumers. Yet most companies have zero visibility into how these systems represent them.

Bluefish is positioning itself as the solution to this blind spot. The platform gives enterprises granular control over how large language models represent their brands, tracking AI responses across platforms and optimizing them for consistency. Think of it as SEO for the AI internet.

Their Custom AI Audiences feature—launched alongside the funding announcement—lets marketers model distinct customer segments and inject proprietary strategies into AI monitoring. It's the kind of granular control that generalized AI tools simply can't offer.

The results speak for themselves. Bluefish has achieved 10x revenue growth over the past six months. Beyond Adidas, their client roster includes real estate giant Tishman Speyer and advertising conglomerate Omnicom—companies that can't afford to let AI platforms tell their story for them.

The Team Building the Future

Sherman didn't build this company in a vacuum. His co-founders bring serious pedigree: CTO Andrei Dunca previously co-founded LiveRail, which Facebook acquired in 2014, while COO Jing Feng cut her teeth at Microsoft. It's the kind of experienced team that VCs dream about, and one that enterprise clients trust with their most valuable asset: their brand.

The timing couldn't be better. As consumers increasingly turn to AI for product recommendations, travel planning, and purchase decisions, brands are discovering they need specialized tools to influence these interactions. Traditional marketing channels — from search ads to social media — are losing their dominance as conversational AI becomes a primary consumer interface.

Why This Matters Now

The Bluefish funding round highlights growing recognition that AI-driven discovery is emerging as a critical new marketing channel.

When a customer asks ChatGPT for a restaurant or Claude for project management software, the AI’s response can strongly influence which brands get visibility. Yet most companies have no systematic way to monitor, let alone optimize, these interactions.

"We're seeing a fundamental shift in how discovery happens," Sherman explains. "Traditional SEO optimized for search engines. We're optimizing for AI engines."

The approach is already paying dividends. Bluefish's enterprise focus—with more than 80% of its customers drawn from the Fortune 500—sets it apart in a crowded field of AI marketing tools that typically target smaller businesses. Clients span CPG, automotive, financial services, and beauty sectors, suggesting the platform's applicability across industries.

The Road Ahead

With $24 million in total funding now in the bank, Bluefish is betting big on expansion. The fresh capital will fuel product development beyond Custom AI Audiences, while growing engineering and client-facing teams to meet enterprise demand.

But perhaps more importantly, they're positioning themselves as the infrastructure layer for AI-era marketing. As more brands wake up to the reality that AI platforms are reshaping consumer behavior, the demand for specialized tools will only intensify.

The next test? International expansion and deeper enterprise workflow integration. If Bluefish can crack those challenges while maintaining their explosive growth trajectory, they could become a key part of how Fortune 500 companies navigate the AI internet.