Tano raises $4M to buy creators like Meta ads
What's the deal? UK startup TanoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised a $4 million seed round led by Cherry Ventures, with Seedcamp and The Players FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → participating. The company, founded in 2025, automates influencer marketing — matching brands with creators and running campaigns end to end. The round brings its total funding to $5 million.
What's the endgame? Tano wants brands to buy creators the way they buy paid media. "A brand should be able to come to a creator advertising platform and allocate their budget and the intent, and then they should be able to return, just like you go onto Meta," said chief executive Will Caplan.
How it works: Tano's AI agents scan a database of more than 280 million creator profiles, analysing audio and comment sentiment to vet and recommend fits. The agents then handle recruitment, contracts, and payments, track which posts drive clicks or sales, and flag the best performers for brands to boost with paid ads. Caplan calls it a "recursive loop," where campaign data feeds back into the recommendation algorithm.
Why now? Big brands are managing creators at unprecedented scale. Unilever — a Tano client — recently said it works with more than 500,000 creators in its top markets and leans on AI to find them; L'Oréal cited a network of half a million this summer.
The co-founders, Caplan and Sagar Shah, were part-time creators themselves before starting Tano, running TikTok and YouTube accounts. "Why am I sending 50 emails to an influencer marketer to get paid £50? This just seems completely absurd," Caplan said.
Where the money goes: Tano plans to spend on compute and on growing its engineering and creator strategist teams. Clients include Lovable, HelloFresh, and Skin+Me. It charges per creator post, takes a share of affiliate revenue, or offers flat fees to larger clients.
What could go wrong? Tano enters a crowded field, competing with software platforms such as CreatorIQ and Aspire, affiliate networks like Impact.com and Awin, and larger channels including Meta and Google. Its edge, Caplan says, is campaign data and packaging the full workflow into one platform.
The signal: Tano's raise sits in the top 5% of UK marketing seed rounds, reflecting a shift from manual influencer deals toward creator content bought and measured like paid media. Agentio raised a $40 million Series B in November 2025 on a similar thesis. The open question is whether automation makes the work measurably easier — not just adds another AI layer.
Read more: Business Insider
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
