Fluency Raises $40M In Series A Funding Led By Integrity Growth Partners

Fluency, a Burlington, Vermont-based adtech company founded in 2017, has raised $40 million in its Series A funding round. This marks the company’s first major institutional investment after years of bootstrapped, profitable growth. The funding was led and entirely provided by Integrity Growth Partners, a growth equity firm focused on founder-led technology businesses.

Fluency develops an AI powered Digital Advertising Operating System (DAOS) that automates and centralizes paid media campaigns across major channels, including search, social, and programmatic platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon, The Trade Desk, and Basis Technologies. It serves agencies and brands managing large scale operations, powering nearly $3 billion in annual media spend, over 250,000 monthly campaigns, and supporting more than 50,000 business locations. The platform uses customizable automation rules called Blueprints to handle tasks such as dynamic ad adjustments, budget management, content creation, optimization, and reporting, reducing management time by up to 90%. Founded by a team with prior experience building Dealer.com (acquired for $1.1 billion in 2014), Fluency has grown organically, achieving profitability since 2020 and ranking on the Inc. 5000 list for three consecutive years, including #1,278 in 2025.

The $40 million Series A round closed in mid December 2025, with Integrity Growth Partners (IGP) as the sole investor. No post money valuation has been publicly disclosed. Fluency plans to allocate the capital toward advancing its agentic AI features (enabling autonomous campaign oversight, such as automatically swapping underperforming ad creatives) and expanding integrations with publishers and technology partners. This investment will also support team expansion from under 120 employees to around 200 by the end of 2026, with a focus on engineering, product, and AI roles.

This funding positions Fluency to capitalize on the growing demand for AI driven efficiency in the $1 trillion global digital advertising market, where brands and agencies face challenges from fragmented channels and manual processes. By enhancing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) AI and embedding it into workflows, Fluency aims to minimize user intervention, improve ad performance, and target a larger share of the market projected to reach $6.4 billion in serviceable addressable value by 2028 at an 11% CAGR. Competitors like Hootsuite, Smartly, and Sprinklr offer similar tools but often cater to larger enterprises; Fluency differentiates through its end to end OS approach, high retention rates, and focus on mid market agencies shifting from holding companies. The partnership with IGP, which recently closed a $220 million debut fund, provides strategic guidance while allowing Fluency to remain independent under its founding leadership.

Fluency’s $40 million Series A funding round represents a pivotal milestone for the adtech startup, enabling it to accelerate its mission of transforming digital advertising through AI automation. Founded in 2017 in Burlington, Vermont, by a seasoned team including CEO Mike Lane (who previously co-founded and served as COO of Dealer.com, an automotive digital marketing platform acquired by Dealertrack Technologies for approximately $1.1 billion in 2014) Fluency has built a robust Digital Advertising Operating System (DAOS). This platform addresses longstanding pain points in paid media management by centralizing operations across walled gardens (like Meta and Google) and the open web, allowing agencies and brands to scale campaigns efficiently without relying on endless hiring, outsourcing, or disjointed tools.

At its core, Fluency’s DAOS functions as a “one-stop shop” for campaign execution, from creative development and targeting to performance optimization and reporting. It leverages customizable automation templates known as Blueprints, which enable rule based adjustments (such as boosting ad spend based on inventory levels, weather data, or neighborhood specific targeting) while still permitting manual overrides. The system’s AI capabilities, powered by models from Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, incorporate retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to query data insights (e.g., “How did last week’s rain impact ad performance?”) and autonomously revise blueprints for better outcomes. This reduces campaign launch times to minutes and overall management effort by up to 90%, making it particularly valuable for multi location brands and agencies handling complex, high volume portfolios.

Fluency’s traction is evident in its operational metrics: it powers nearly $3 billion in annual media spend, supports over 250,000 monthly campaigns, and serves more than 50,000 business locations for clients including Fortune 500 companies and agencies like Cox Automotive, Innocean, and The Johnson Group. The company has maintained profitability since 2020 by reinvesting earnings into product development, achieving organic growth without prior venture funding. Its recognition includes three consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 list, with a 2025 ranking of #1,278, and a finalist spot in the 2024 Amazon Ads Partner Awards for Technology Innovation. Certified partnerships with major publishers and demand side platforms (DSPs) like Amazon, The Trade Desk, and Basis Technologies further bolster its ecosystem integrations.

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The Series A round, fully funded by Integrity Growth Partners (IGP), injects $40 million into Fluency at a time when adtech is ripe for AI disruption. IGP, a growth equity firm specializing in bootstrapped, founder-led tech companies, recently raised a $220 million debut fund and has backed at least five deals from it, including this investment in Fluency. As part of the deal, IGP will join Fluency’s board, providing strategic support while the company remains independent under its founding team’s leadership. No pre or post money valuation was disclosed, consistent with many growth stage deals in adtech where focus shifts to operational scaling over unicorn hype.

Fluency intends to deploy the capital across several key areas: enhancing agentic AI to enable fully autonomous workflow oversight, accelerating R&D to minimize user interactions and embed AI seamlessly into existing processes, and expanding integrations with additional publishers and tech partners. This includes hiring to grow the team from under 120 to about 200 employees by the end of 2026, prioritizing roles in engineering, product, and AI. Marketing efforts will also ramp up to increase visibility in a competitive landscape.

In the broader market context, digital advertising spend is projected to exceed $1 trillion globally by 2027, driven by shifts from analog to digital budgets and the proliferation of channels, with over 70% concentrated on major platforms like Google and Meta. However, marketers often struggle with “point solutions”, disparate tools that lead to compliance risks, performance gaps, and inefficiencies. Fluency positions itself as a comprehensive alternative, akin to HubSpot or Salesforce in CRM, outperforming legacy systems, in-house builds, or competitors like Hootsuite, Smartly, and Sprinklr, which typically target larger enterprises and may lack end to end integration. The company’s serviceable addressable market is expected to grow at an 11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), reaching $6.4 billion by 2028, fueled by brands bringing advertising in-house and independent agencies gaining ground over large holding companies.

Looking ahead, Fluency aims to capture 10% of global digital ad spend management, introduce agency client collaboration tools, and deepen ecosystem ties. CEO Mike Lane highlighted the platform’s role in addressing scalability challenges: “Our clients are accountable for delivering multichannel advertising, often across hundreds of brands and thousands of locations. It’s impossible for humans alone to manage the level of complexity this requires.” IGP’s Managing Partner Ryan Anderson praised Fluency’s streamlined approach: “They’ve elegantly woven together entire multi step processes to streamline operations that have simply become untenable.”

This funding arrives amid adtech trends emphasizing AI agents for automation, as seen in the platform’s launch during the COVID-19 era, which amplified demand for remote, efficient tools. By focusing on “digital workforce multipliers,” Fluency could disrupt traditional workflows, making it harder for users to revert to manual methods once adopted. Overall, the round not only validates Fluency’s bootstrapped success but also equips it to lead in an industry evolving toward AI centric, integrated solutions.

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