Topsort raises $20 million to accelerate clean advertising revolution using AI and machine learning tech

Artificial intelligence and machine learning-based technology startup, Topsort, has raised $20 million in Series A funding.

The round, which is led by Upload Ventures and returning seed round investors, Quiet Capital and Pear Ventures, sees the company valued at $150 million. 

Topsort says it will use the cash to further scale its clean advertising platform that’s “free of creepy third-party cookie tracking and privacy invasive data – a significant departure from the advertising world of yesterday and a leap towards democratising the same kind of auction-based advertising that garnered massive profits for giants like Google and Amazon”.

Essentially a large “prediction machine”, Topsort works on a self-learning algorithm, using human feedback to maintain a constant state of improvement.

Founded in 2021, the company is led by CEO and co-founder Regina Ye, a former beauty brand seller turned advertising disruptor, CTO and co-founder Francisco Larrain, a serial entrepreneur who had two exits including one from Groupon, and co-founder and Chief Scientist, Michael Ostrovsky, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and an economist on auction theory, game theory, and marketplace design.

“This funding round is further fuelling our mission to accelerate the clean advertising revolution using AI and new age machine learning technology,” says Ye.

“Only one part of what’s to come is the democratisation of auction-based advertising technology into Bidless formats, which previously had a much higher bar of entry and amassed an insane amount of profit for some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley.”

“With Topsort, we hope to democratise the access to KPI driven, efficient and transparent media in the new age of post-cookies to both enterprise retailers, top brands and agencies, as well as small,long-tail sellers alike. Advertisers of all shapes and sizes can benefit from a highly profitable ad business that works for everyone within the ecosystem.” 

Topsort has worked with such retailers, marketplaces and brands as Poshmark, Cencosud, Unilever, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, General Mills, Glovo (part of Delivery Hero), and Phillips. It previously raised $8.6 million in a seed round in 2022.