Tano Raises $4 Million Seed Funding Led by Cherry Ventures to Scale AI-Powered Creator Marketing

Tano, a London-based AI-powered creator marketing startup, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Cherry Ventures. The funding will help the company expand its platform, increase computing capacity and hire additional engineering and creator strategy talent.

The round takes Tano's total funding to approximately $5 million. Cherry Ventures led the latest investment, while Seedcamp, The Players Fund and Operators & Friends backed its earlier funding round of approximately $800,000 in late 2025.

Founded in February 2025 by Will Caplan and Sagar Shah, Tano is developing AI agents that automate influencer marketing workflows, from identifying creators and negotiating partnerships to coordinating payments and tracking campaign performance.

Why Tano Is Automating Influencer Marketing

Traditional influencer marketing campaigns require brands and agencies to manage multiple manual processes. Teams must identify suitable creators, contact them, negotiate rates, coordinate product deliveries, manage content and measure the resulting sales.

These activities can make smaller creator partnerships expensive and time-consuming to manage at scale.

Tano aims to reduce that operational burden through AI agents that handle creator outreach and campaign coordination. Its approach is designed to help brands work with a larger number of creators without relying entirely on traditional agency teams.

The founders experienced these challenges as creators themselves. Caplan previously worked in growth at Encord and sales at Onfido, while Shah was a founding engineer at Holly and also worked at Let's Do This.

How Tano's AI Agents Manage Creator Campaigns

Tano's platform automates several stages of influencer marketing. Its agents can discover potential creators, contact them, coordinate product shipments, communicate campaign requirements and process payments.

The platform supports campaigns across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. It also uses tracking links, discount codes and shopping integrations to connect creator content with sales activity.

According to the company, its agents conduct approximately 400,000 creator conversations every month and work with tens of thousands of creators.

Tano says its system identified and vetted 2,358 creators in two hours of human brand-expert time for one campaign. The company estimates that completing the same work manually would have required 754 hours.

The platform also uses confidence rankings and safeguards to identify situations where human intervention is needed. Creator strategists continue to work alongside the agents, particularly when the system lacks sufficient confidence in a decision.

Enterprise Customers and Campaign Performance

Tano says it works with brands including Unilever, HelloFresh, Bloom & Wild and Skin+Me.

The company reported strong campaign growth in the third quarter of 2026. According to its figures:

• Creator posts increased by 139% quarter over quarter.

• Creator-driven sales increased by 113% quarter over quarter.

• Average customer acquisition cost declined by 12%.

• More than 65% of creators who posted for Tano brands during 2026 posted again.

• The average repeat creator published 5.3 posts for the same brand.

These are company-reported performance figures. They indicate growing campaign activity and repeat participation, but do not independently establish Tano's revenue, profitability or long-term customer retention.

The Creator Economy Opportunity

Tano is targeting a large and expanding advertising market. Goldman Sachs has forecast that the broader creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027, including platform payouts and brand spending.

The opportunity for platforms such as Tano is to make creator partnerships easier to manage at scale. Instead of relying on a limited number of large influencers, brands can potentially coordinate campaigns involving many smaller creators.

Tano is also exploring agent-to-agent negotiations, in which AI agents representing brands and creators negotiate directly with one another. This could reduce the time required to agree on campaign terms, although the model will need to demonstrate that creators retain control over pricing, content and commercial decisions.

How Tano Plans to Use Its $4 Million Funding

The new seed funding will support three priorities:

1. Computing capacity: Expanding the infrastructure needed to operate its AI agents at greater scale.

2. Engineering: Developing and improving the platform's automation capabilities.

3. Creator strategy hiring: Increasing the number of human specialists who support campaigns and intervene when agents require additional judgment.

Tano currently has approximately 20 people in its London office. The company has not disclosed a specific hiring target following the funding round.

What Comes Next for Tano?

Tano's ambition is to build a creator advertising platform that allows brands to work with a much wider pool of creators through automated campaign management.

However, scaling this model will involve more than increasing the number of AI conversations. The company must demonstrate that creator relationships remain authentic, campaign outcomes are reliable and human intervention becomes less costly as activity grows.

Its ability to improve software margins while maintaining creator trust will be an important test of the business model.

The $4 million seed round gives Tano additional capital to develop its technology and expand its operations. As AI agents take on more of the work traditionally handled by influencer marketing agencies, Tano is positioning itself to compete for a larger share of the creator advertising market.