Seattle startup Gradial raises $13M for AI marketing tech that automates content operations

Gradial, a Seattle startup that uses AI agents to help marketing operations teams increase productivity, raised $13 million in new funding, the company announced Monday.

The Series A round was led by Madrona with participation from Pruven Capital, General Advance, Outsiders Fund, and DLA Piper. Gradial plans to double its team of 20 employees to accelerate product development and customer acquisition.

“Marketing teams have poured substantial resources into producing more content, but their operational processes just can’t keep up with that volume and complexity,” Gradial CEO and co-founder Doug Tallmadge said in a statement. “We want to empower the marketer to spend less time thinking about the process and more time thinking about outcomes for the customer.”

According to the company, Gradial’s agentic AI platform helps customers speed up traditionally manual content production processes. Its software automates CMS authoring and production, ticket routing and triage, and campaign and experiment building, as well as quality assurance, brand, and compliance checks.

Gradial says it’s seen 30x year-over-year revenue growth and is projecting 200% growth in the first quarter of 2025.

Gradial is one of several companies using generative AI for marketing tasks — from startups to large giants.

The startup launched in 2023 and its customers and partners include AWS, Adobe, dentsu | Merkle, EPAM Systems, Slalom, and Infogain.

“Among AI startups, Gradial stands out for the impact they’re already delivering for enterprise clients — users love the product, and businesses are seeing a compelling ROI,” Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain said in a statement. “Gradial is leveraging unstructured and structured data and business processes to deliver an intelligent workflow automation engine for marketing operations.”

Tallmadge was previously a software engineering manager at SpaceX. Other co-founders include chief growth officer Anish Chadalavada, a former AI strategy manager at Microsoft and investor at Point72 Ventures; CTO Deip Kumar, who also worked at SpaceX and Microsoft; and COO Anup Chamrajnagar, who worked at Point72. All four co-founders graduated from Dartmouth College.

Gradial previously raised $5.4 million in a seed round in February 2024.