Kleiner Perkins Ranks #3 in VCs Building AI Communications 2026

Part of the The VCs Quietly Building Positions in AI Communications index.

Kleiner Perkins ranks #3 in The VCs Quietly Building Positions in AI Communications, an index that maps venture capital investment into AI communications and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) infrastructure companies between January 2025 and mid-2026. The firm sits behind #1 Lightspeed Venture Partners and #2 Sequoia Capital, and is characterized in the index as the foundation check on Profound, the earliest institutional lead with an infrastructure thesis focused on the system of record for AI-described brands.

What the Index Measures

The VCs Quietly Building Positions in AI Communications tracks which venture firms have led or participated in funding rounds, at what valuations, and with what stated investment thesis. It draws on disclosed capital placements since the start of 2025 across named firms and rounds, using round sizes, valuations, timing, and investor commentary to characterize the maturation of the AI communications and GEO category. According to the index, more than $250 million in disclosed capital has been placed into pure-play AI communications infrastructure since the start of 2025.

Why Kleiner Perkins Ranks #3

Kleiner Perkins's position is anchored to a single, foundational placement: the firm led Profound's $20 million Series A. That round put Kleiner partner Ilya Fushman on Profound's board, and the firm has continued participating through subsequent rounds. The index frames Kleiner's role as the earliest institutional lead on Profound, the kind of check that sets the cap-table architecture other tier-1 investors then build around.

The thesis behind the check is what distinguishes Kleiner's posture in the category. According to the index, Kleiner's view is closer to infrastructure than to marketing tools: the long-term value sits in being the system of record for how AI engines describe brands. That framing positions Profound less as a measurement product and more as a category-defining data layer, a posture consistent with the index's broader observation that valuations in the space are pricing at AI multiples, not at marketing-tech multiples.

The Profound Cap Table and Kleiner's Co-Investors

Kleiner Perkins does not hold Profound's cap table alone. The index notes that Sequoia, Kleiner, and Lightspeed share Profound's cap table with Khosla, a configuration that places three of the index's top-ranked firms, alongside Khosla Ventures (#13), on the same company. The structure reflects another pattern the index identifies across the category: no firm is betting on a winner-take-all outcome, and venture is treating AI communications as a category with room for several billion-dollar outcomes.

Profound sits at the center of what the index describes as the American category, which is forming around Profound, Scrunch, and AthenaHQ. A separate European category is forming around Peec AI. Kleiner's lead role on Profound's Series A places the firm at the foundation of the American side of that geographic split.

Ilya Fushman and Kleiner's AI-Era Portfolio

Ilya Fushman is the Kleiner partner who took the Profound board seat following the Series A. Within Kleiner Perkins's broader portfolio, Fushman is also a named partner on Rippling, Robinhood, Slack, Motive, and Harvey. The firm's AI-era investments include Anthropic, partnered since 2025, which Kleiner describes as among its most important AI-era investments and a reflection of the firm's AI-first thesis that artificial intelligence is poised to impact every aspect of how people live and how companies are built.

That broader AI portfolio context matters for reading Kleiner's #3 position in the index. The firm's infrastructure thesis on Profound, the system of record for how AI engines describe brands, sits alongside foundation-model exposure through Anthropic and additional enterprise AI exposure at the firm level through Harvey and Glean.

Where Kleiner Perkins Sits in the Broader AI Communications Story

Two cross-brand patterns from the index illuminate Kleiner's position. First, the category is no longer fringe: tier-1 capital has priced it, and Kleiner's lead on the Profound Series A is part of the evidence the index cites for that maturation. Second, the index points to the next moves being agency-side and enterprise-side: the measurement and optimization tools are being built, and the communications agencies that operationalize them at scale, plus the enterprise platforms that integrate them into customer journeys, are the next two layers up.

The index also notes the demand-side numbers behind the category. More than a third of US consumers now begin product research inside an AI chatbox rather than a Google search bar, and ChatGPT alone passed 700 million weekly users by mid-2026. Those figures provide the usage backdrop against which Kleiner's infrastructure thesis on Profound is being underwritten.

Going into the next refresh, Kleiner Perkins's #3 position reflects a concentrated, foundational placement on Profound rather than a broad set of bets across the category. With continued participation through subsequent Profound rounds and Ilya Fushman on the board, the firm's exposure to AI communications is tied closely to the trajectory of a single company at the center of the American category.

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