Hightouch reaches $100M ARR fueled by marketing tools powered by AI

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Since introducing its AI product 20 months ago, Hightouch has added $70 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR), it tells TechCrunch, bringing the startup to a total of $100 million in ARR. “Before Gen AI, it was impossible for someone without many, many years of design skills to create consumer-level assets,” said Kashish Gupta, Hightouch’s co-CEO. The company is also led by co-CEO Tejas Manohar, a former engineering manager at Segment, a customer data platform acquired by Twilio for $3.2 billion in 2020. However, Hightouch’s approach goes beyond what standard AI models can do on their own. Hightouch says that many brands initially attempted to generate ad campaigns using general foundational models — broad AI systems that power tools like chatbots but lack knowledge of specific brands — only to find the resulting images and videos failed to meet “on-brand” standards. “Foundation models didn’t know about specific consumer brands, whether it was colors or fonts, tone, or assets,” Gupta says. “The LLMs would hallucinate products that didn’t exist, and you can’t do advertising and emails on products that don’t exist.” Techcrunch event Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410. Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW To ensure brand consistency, Hightouch connects directly to its customers’ existing creative tools, such as the popular design platform Figma, photo libraries, and content management systems (CMS). By pulling from these sources, the platform “learns” a company’s specific brand identity. Hightouch’s AI agents then use these photos, designs, and customer insights to help marketers build personalized ad campaigns autonomously, without having to wait on designers or developers. The goal of Hightouch’s AI is to create images and videos that look like they were made by professional designers, avoiding the “fake” or generic look often associated with AI. “For example, Domino’s will never generate a pizza,” Gupta says. “They’ll always use existing images of pizza, and they’ll place it into an ad where the background might be generated, and other things might be generated around it.” The company, which now employs approximately 380 people, was valued at $1.2 billion in February 2025 when it raised an $80 million Series C funding round led by Sapphire Ventures. Pictured above, left to right: Tejas Manohar and Kashish Gupta Marina Temkin Reporter, Venture Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her career, Marina was a financial analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation. 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