Passionfroot Raises $15M to Push Its B2B Creator Marketplace Into the U.S.

Updated July 22, 2026 4:24 pm

Passionfroot has raised $15 million in fresh funding to expand its marketplace for B2B creators and brand marketing into the United States, with backing led by Insight Partners. The Berlin startup says the money will support a new New York office, a São Paulo hub and a larger team as it moves to serve companies looking for more efficient ways to reach professional audiences in a crowded AI-driven market.

The Series A round arrives at a moment when brands are trying to stand out in a software landscape increasingly shaped by generative AI, creator-led education and niche media channels. Passionfroot’s pitch is simple: connect companies with specialized creators who already command trust in technical, business and startup circles, then help those brands manage campaigns, payments and performance in one place.

Why the company thinks B2B creator marketing is taking off

Passionfroot’s bet is that the traditional playbook for B2B marketing is being rewritten. As more AI tools and software products enter the market, companies are finding it harder to differentiate themselves through paid ads alone and are turning to creators who can explain complex products in a way that feels credible and useful.

That argument is gaining traction with investors as well as customers. Insight Partners managing director Rebecca Liu-Doyle said the company sits at the intersection of two shifts: brands are becoming more consumer-like in how they market, and creators are becoming more specialized in the expertise they can offer.

Liu-Doyle said that AI is increasing the need for evangelism, storytelling and education, while on the supply side there are subject-matter experts who understand a market deeply and can produce high-quality content.

In other words, Passionfroot is not selling generic influencer marketing. It is focused on creators with industry knowledge — people who write newsletters, host podcasts, publish on LinkedIn or produce analysis on platforms where B2B buyers actually look for product recommendations.

How Passionfroot’s marketplace works

Passionfroot describes itself as a marketplace designed to help brands work with B2B creators more efficiently. The platform combines creator discovery, campaign execution, payments and analytics into a single workflow, making it easier for marketing teams to find the right voices and track what those partnerships are producing.

The startup says its system is built around a proprietary creator graph informed by campaign reach and performance data collected from thousands of activations. That dataset helps it match companies with creators who align with a target audience, subject area and campaign objective.

It also includes a wallet for cross-border creator payments, allowing companies to compensate talent globally while tracking spend across campaigns. That is a practical feature for brands working with creators in different regions and time zones, and for teams that want to reduce the administrative burden of managing many individual partnerships.

What the AI agent Zest does

Passionfroot has also introduced an AI agent called Zest, which it says can help brands plan, execute and monitor campaigns. The product was launched after the company’s last fundraise in 2024 and is meant to reduce the manual work involved in creator marketing.

According to the company, Zest can also suggest creators both inside and outside the platform if they fit a brand’s strategy. That makes the tool more than a simple campaign dashboard; it is positioned as a discovery and optimization layer that uses AI to streamline both planning and measurement.

Beyond campaign management, Passionfroot says it is building tools to help clients understand how their content is affecting AI citations and whether their brand appears inside AI-generated answers. That reflects a growing marketing concern: visibility is no longer limited to search rankings or social reach, but also to how often a brand is referenced by AI systems and assistants.

Why the U.S. expansion matters now

The New York office is the clearest sign that Passionfroot wants a bigger share of the U.S. market, where many of the world’s largest B2B software companies, AI startups and creator-led media businesses are based. The company says co-founder and CEO Jen Phan is relocating there to lead the expansion.

Opening in New York gives Passionfroot a presence closer to enterprise customers, startup founders, venture-backed software brands and the creators who cover them. It also places the company in one of the world’s most concentrated markets for B2B marketing budgets, which could help accelerate adoption if the platform can prove return on investment.

At the same time, the company is opening in São Paulo, a move that suggests it sees Latin America as another opportunity for growth. Brazil has a large creator economy and a strong startup ecosystem, making it a logical region for a company that wants to support international payments and multilingual content strategies.

What the company says about growth

Phan said the company’s revenue increased 13-fold over the past year, a claim that signals rapid traction even if the startup has not disclosed absolute revenue figures. She also said Passionfroot has added customers including ElevenLabs, Figma, Replit, Framer and Gamma, names that underscore its focus on software and AI-related businesses.

The startup says it has already paid at least $10 million to creators through the platform over the last 18 months. That figure helps illustrate the scale of the marketplace and the extent to which brands are using it to source and manage specialized creator campaigns.

Who is backing the round and what does it signal?

Insight Partners led the Series A, with participation from earlier backers Creandum, Supernode Global and s16vc. Passionfroot says the financing takes its total raised to more than $21 million.

For a startup in this category, the investor mix matters. Insight Partners is known for backing software companies that can scale rapidly, which suggests the firm sees Passionfroot less as a niche creator tool and more as infrastructure for the next phase of B2B marketing.

The round also arrives amid increased competition in the broader creator economy. Platforms such as Substack and Beehiiv have been adding tools aimed at helping creators earn more directly through newsletters, communities and advertising. Passionfroot is approaching the market from the brand side, but it is still part of the same larger shift: creators are becoming a more formal channel for distribution, education and monetization.

How the creator economy is changing B2B marketing

The creator economy originally took root in consumer-facing social media, but B2B companies are now applying the same logic to software, infrastructure and professional services. Instead of paying for broad awareness, brands increasingly want to work with writers, analysts and operators who can influence purchasing decisions among technical or business audiences.

That shift is particularly relevant in AI, where product launches happen quickly and competition is intense. Many tools can look similar on the surface, so trust, credibility and explanation are becoming central to how companies win attention.

Passionfroot’s thesis is that creators are not just media partners; they are a distribution layer for product education. In a market crowded with new AI applications, a newsletter recommendation or podcast mention from a trusted voice can matter as much as a traditional ad campaign.

Why LinkedIn, Substack and podcasts matter

Passionfroot says buyers are increasingly discovering products on LinkedIn, creator newsletters on Substack and business podcasts on YouTube. Those channels are attractive because they sit closer to decision-making than many broad social feeds, especially for audiences evaluating software and tools.

That also helps explain why niche creators are becoming more valuable. They may have smaller audiences than mass-market influencers, but they often have stronger authority with the exact people a B2B brand wants to reach.

• LinkedIn offers professional visibility and peer-to-peer sharing.
• Substack gives creators a direct line to readers who actively subscribe.
• YouTube podcasts and interviews can deepen trust through long-form conversation.
• Specialized newsletters and communities can help brands reach narrow but high-intent audiences.

What changes for Passionfroot after this round?

The funding is likely to be used in three main areas: geographic expansion, product development and team growth. Opening offices in the U.S. and Brazil will require hiring across sales, operations and customer support, while the company’s AI roadmap suggests further investment in automation and analytics.

Passionfroot is also likely to face pressure to prove that its platform can generate measurable business outcomes. For B2B marketers, awareness is useful, but bookings, pipeline and revenue are what justify repeat spending. That is why the company’s interest in AI citations and brand visibility inside AI-generated answers is notable: it reflects the growing demand for attribution in a fragmented media environment.

The startup’s challenge is to show that it can become more than a marketplace. To win larger budgets, it needs to position itself as a system of record for creator-led B2B campaigns — one that can identify talent, manage payments, measure performance and tie everything back to business impact.

Timeline of Passionfroot’s growth

The following timeline shows how the company has moved from an early-stage marketplace to a more ambitious platform for B2B creator marketing.

What the broader market says about this funding round

Passionfroot’s raise fits a larger pattern in startup investing: tools that help companies cut through AI-era noise are attracting attention. As software creation becomes cheaper and faster, distribution and brand-building become more important, and creators are increasingly used as the bridge between products and potential buyers.

That does not mean the market is easy. B2B creator marketing still has to prove itself against established channels such as search, events, paid social and direct sales. But the emergence of dedicated marketplaces suggests the category is moving beyond experimentation.

For creators, this trend could mean more structured brand work and better monetization opportunities. For companies, it could mean access to experts who can explain complex products in a way that feels authentic. And for platforms like Passionfroot, it could mean the chance to become core infrastructure in a fast-changing marketing stack.

What happens next?

Passionfroot now has the funding to test whether its model can scale from Europe into one of the most competitive startup markets in the world. Much will depend on whether it can turn early customer traction into a repeatable U.S. business and whether its AI tools can genuinely improve campaign outcomes.

If the company succeeds, it could become one of the better-known platforms in the emerging B2B creator economy. If not, it will still have highlighted a broader shift in how software companies market themselves: not just through ads and sales teams, but through creators who can teach, interpret and influence at the point of discovery.

Either way, the message behind the raise is clear. In the AI era, distribution is becoming as important as product, and Passionfroot is betting that specialized creators will play a central role in both.