UK-based startup Tano has raised $4 million in seed funding to automate influencer marketing, positioning itself as a technology-driven alternative to traditional advertising agencies.
Founded in 2025 by former creators Will Caplan and Sagar Shah, the company is developing an AI-powered platform that connects brands with suitable content creators and manages campaigns from recruitment to performance tracking. The funding round was led by Cherry Ventures, bringing Tano’s total funding to $5 million.
Tano lands $4 million seed funding to challenge traditional influencer agencies
The founders said their own experiences securing brand partnerships exposed inefficiencies in the industry, where creators often face lengthy negotiations and extensive manual outreach for relatively small payments.
Tano combines AI agents with human creator strategists to identify and evaluate influencers from a database of more than 280 million profiles. Its technology analyses creators’ content, audio and audience engagement before recommending potential partners to brands.
The platform also automates communications, contracts and payments, while monitoring campaign performance, including website traffic and sales. It uses this data to identify successful content that brands can amplify through paid advertising.
Tano counts Unilever, HelloFresh, Lovable and Skin+Me among its clients. It plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering and creator strategy teams, while investing in computing infrastructure.
