- Astute has raised $1.2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round and launched its B2B creator platform.
- This launch comes after Passionfroot raised $15 million in a Series A for a similar platform.
- Founder Vida Stanić created the platform drawing on her experience as a growth lead at Fluidstack.
Vida Stanić used to spend evenings searching Substack for contact details that were hard to find. She contacted hundreds of creators and usually got just one reply after weeks of waiting. This challenging experience led her to develop the product she offers today.
Astute raised $1.2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round and launched what it describes as the first B2B new media company, built for a media world with more than 20 million independent channels. Investors include Flyer One Ventures, Silicon Gardens, Marathon Fund, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and several strategic angel investors.
“For years, B2B marketing relied on ads, PR, and SEO. But audiences have moved to new media channels, newsletters, podcasts, LinkedIn, and X. In the direct-to-consumer space, that shift made influencer marketing one of the biggest budget items. B2B is next. What makes it hard for companies today is access. When I was head of growth, I’d spend evenings scrolling Substack for an email address that was never listed, pitching a hundred creators to maybe get one yes five weeks later. Astute handles all of that in minutes,” said Stanić, founder and chief executive of Astute.
Market trends and timing
Global influencer marketing spending is projected to hit $40.51 billion in 2026, up from $32.55 billion in 2025, according to Mordor Intelligence. This is a 30% year-over-year increase. B2B is the fastest-growing segment, as buyers now trust independent voices more than traditional ads, PR, or search engine optimization.
Astute believes that as AI agents start shopping and researching for users, their recommendations will be influenced by the same creator content companies are trying to reach.
Stanić is a strong fit for this market. She grew up in Serbia and moved to London at 17 on a full academic scholarship. She was the first commercial hire at a startup before it found product-market fit, and later led growth at Fluidstack as it grew from a $2 million to a $2 billion valuation in less than a year.
Her co-founder, Abhishek Manikandan, graduated from Oxford and worked as a machine learning engineer at The Trade Desk. He also built a B2B engineering audience with more than 15 million YouTube views.
The startup, founded by Stanić and Manikandan, uses two AI agents. One handles partnership tasks for newsletter writers, podcast hosts, and social creators, such as scheduling, contracts, and follow-ups. The other helps B2B companies by tracking more than a million creator posts each minute, finding relevant mentions, building creator strategies, and securing editorial spots, interviews, podcast features, ads, and event partnerships.
The platform also reports on impressions, conversions, brand score, and company visibility in AI search engines.
A competitor with a head start and $15 million more
Astute’s claim to be first is already being challenged. Berlin-based Passionfroot, which Tech Funding News has covered since its 2024 seed round, closed a $15 million Series A on July 22, 2026, led by Insight Partners. Its AI agent, Zest, manages creator campaigns from start to finish.
Astute is just launching with a pre-seed round and has not disclosed any revenue, while Passionfroot already has a strong enterprise customer base and much more funding. Flyer One Ventures, which backs Astute, also invested in Tower’s $6.4 million round earlier in 2026, showing the wider trend in AI-native go-to-market tools.
“Vida has been the marketer who needed this and could not buy it. Abhishek has been the creator on the other end of the table. But beyond the founder market fit, as a team they have a winning combination of ambition, resilience and talent that we love backing at F1V,” said Vital Laptenok, general partner at Flyer One Ventures.
“This is only the beginning. We are building the place where every B2B company comes to build their brand, legitimacy, and eventually, even build their own loyal audiences,” Stanić added.
What’s ahead
The $1.2 million pre-seed round is Astute’s first public funding. The company hasn’t shared details about its team size or hiring plans, but the oversubscribed round suggests there is strong investor interest.
Passionfroot has been building in this space for three years, is already making revenue, and has raised about 13 times more funding than Astute. Astute now has a short window to prove its $1.2 million pre-seed team can outperform a well-funded competitor before others shape what “B2B new media” means.
