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SEED ROUND · FEBRUARY 18, 2025

$5.5M seed led by Canaan Partners.

Valid (formerly Validated), the AI-enabled ad agency revolutionizing digital advertising, announced the closing of a $5.5M seed round led by Canaan Partners. The round — which brings Valid’s total funding to $7.3M — includes participation from existing investors Neo and J Ventures, and many key individuals including Steve Huffman (CEO of Reddit) and Scott Banister (inventor of search ads).

The funding accelerates Valid’s mission to make sophisticated advertising accessible to businesses of all sizes — pairing front-end dashboard software with back-end automations that classify, optimize, and deploy ads on real-time and historical performance.

"Our vision is an ad agency that isn’t constrained by human bandwidth, but one that scales infinitely through AI."

RAHUL BHARDWAJ · CO-FOUNDER & CEO

PRE-SEED · FEBRUARY 2024

$1.2M pre-seed led by Neo.

Before Valid there was Validated — an AI ad engine that tested product messaging by generating and running hundreds of live ads. In February 2024 the company announced a $1.2M pre-seed round led by Neo, with participation from angel investors including BloomTech CEO Austen Allred and other veteran product leaders.

That capital carried the team from ad-testing tool to full-stack, AI-enabled ad agency — and set up the rebrand to Valid.