Jeffrey Katzenberg, Joe Montana Firms Back AI Marketing Startup

Priya Anand, Bloomberg News

Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman and founder of Quibi SA, walks to the morning session during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, US, on Thursday, July 13, 2023. The summit is typically a hotbed for etching out mergers over handshakes, but could take on a much different tone this year against the backdrop of lackluster deal volume, inflation and higher interest rates. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Alembic Technologies Inc., a startup that uses artificial intelligence to help companies tell whether their marketing campaigns are working, has raised $14 million from investors including DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s VC firm.

Alembic uses AI to analyze how social media ad campaigns perform compared with, say, a Super Bowl commercial or billboard, and whether the customers drawn in bought the most profitable products. Katzenberg’s venture firm, WndrCo, led the round, which also included MXV Capital and Liquid 2 Ventures, former Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana’s firm.

Katzenberg said in his decades focused on brand marketing and advertising, he spent billions of dollars, “and the best we were able to do was guess. If I spend $1, do I get a result that’s worth $1?” Alembic is “a real game changer,” he said.

The company’s customers include Nvidia Corp. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that the chipmaker is “using Alembic with great success.”

Alembic plans to use the funding to double its staff of about two dozen people, said CEO Tomás Puig. He said the company’s product helps marketers avoid relying on advertising platforms for metrics about how effective an ad campaign was, instead offering data from a neutral third party.

“The bookies should not be the scorekeeper,” he said. “You don’t go buy a house and your appraisal is done by the person who sells the house.”