Vibe.co Series B: $50M to build the 'Meta for TV ads'

Vibe.co, the ad-tech startup aiming to make streaming TV advertising as easy as buying a Facebook ad, has just closed a massive $50 million Series B funding round, rocketing its valuation to $410 million. The company’s blistering growth, hitting a $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) run rate in under two years, has attracted a who’s who of tech investors, signaling a major shift in how brands will reach audiences in the streaming era.

The Vibe.co Series B was led by Hedosophia, the firm known for its early, successful bets on giants like Spotify and Uber. The round also includes a powerful roster of previous and new investors, including Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky’s fund QuantumLight, Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, and Carolyn Everson, a board member at Disney and Coca-Cola. In a significant move that underscores Vibe’s market position, Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia is also joining the company’s board of directors.

This is a massive wager on the future of television.

As streaming viewership officially surpasses traditional cable and broadcast, the connected TV (CTV) ad market is exploding, projected to hit $72 billion by 2025, according to the IAB. But for many advertisers, especially the direct-to-consumer (DTC) and small-to-medium-sized brands that live on Instagram and Google, the space remains a fragmented, opaque mess.

Vibe.co’s pitch is to be the unified operating system for this new landscape. The company provides an all-in-one platform that brings the familiar precision of digital marketing, hyper-targeting, AI-powered creative, and real-time performance measurement, to the big screen. “The performance TV advertising market is on track to surpass social media advertising by 2035,” said Vibe.co CEO and Co-Founder Arthur Querou. “It’s a trillion-dollar market and we are leading the industry forward.”

The New TV Ad Playbook

Vibe.co’s strategy hinges on turning CTV into a true performance channel, a feat that has long eluded television advertising. By building what it calls the “largest buyers profile database for TV advertisement,” the platform allows its 10,000+ marketers to move beyond broad demographics and launch highly targeted campaigns that drive measurable business results. The company claims its approach delivers four times better performance than traditional TV buys.

A core part of this strategy is artificial intelligence. With 10% of ads on its platform already AI-generated, a figure expected to hit 30% by 2026, Vibe.co is positioning itself as one of the largest distributors of AI content on television. The fresh $50 million will be used to accelerate its AI roadmap, deepen publisher integrations across its network of over 500 channels, and refine its yield optimization tools for advertisers.

Founded in August 2021 by Querou, a Y Combinator alum, and ex-Doctolib founder Franck Tetzlaff, Vibe.co has moved at a breakneck pace. After launching in the US in September 2022, it has rapidly scaled to become one of the fastest-growing software companies on record. For an industry grappling with declining performance on established digital platforms, Vibe.co’s promise of a new, high-performance frontier is clearly resonating with brands and investors alike. This Vibe.co Series B isn't just funding growth; it's an attempt to define the next decade of advertising.