# daydream daydream is an AI-native SEO and AEO firm built as an agency-as-product: SEO agents execute at scale with a dedicated human Growth Lead per customer. Customers include Twingate, Clay, and Beautiful.ai. $21M raised, capped by a $15M Series A led by WndrCo in April 2026, after a Shorty Award win for its OpenArt programmatic-SEO campaign. ## The Solution & Approach daydream is an AI-native SEO and AEO firm built as an "agency-as-product." SEO agents do the execution at scale, and every customer is assigned a dedicated human "Growth Lead" who owns strategy, quality, and outcomes. The hybrid is the whole pitch: not pure software, not a traditional agency, but services delivered through agents with a human expert in the loop. Its own framing is to execute faster than traditional agencies. The model maps cleanly onto Y Combinator's Spring 2026 Request for Startups, which ranked AI-native agencies the #3 category YC most wants founders to build, businesses that deliver the outcome faster, cheaper, and better and capture the value themselves rather than selling a tool. daydream aims that thesis squarely at organic search and the shift toward answer-engine optimization, where ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, not just Google, decide what gets cited. The proof points are programmatic SEO at scale. The OpenArt campaign reported 1M monthly visits in 8 months across 600+ programmatic pages, and won the Shorty Awards SEO & SEM category plus a Bronze in GEO, the cleanest public marker of daydream working the answer-engine surface. Twingate's CEO reports daydream-produced content now drives 40,000+ visits per month, or 80%+ of its non-branded traffic. ## Best for B2B teams that want organic search and AEO outcomes delivered as a managed service, run by agents with a dedicated Growth Lead, rather than buying software to operate themselves. ## Pricing & trial No public pricing. daydream is sold as a services engagement; the site routes to "Book a call," a Full-Service qualification, and a waitlist rather than self-serve tiers. ## Agent Experience How you build on this platform (or wire it into your own agents): | Surface | Available | Docs | |---|---|---| | API | No | — | | MCP | No | — | | SDK | No | — | | CLI | No | — | | llms.txt | No | — | This is a Hire, a services firm, not a platform you build on: the agents run inside daydream's own delivery, and there is no public API, MCP, or SDK. ## Reference customers Twingate, Beautiful.ai, Clay, Lightspark, Lightyear, Mobbin, OneSafe. ## Case studies & customer stories - OpenArt — 1M monthly visits in 8 months on 600+ programmatic pages [source](https://www.withdaydream.com/case-studies/openart) - daydream & OpenArt — 19.8M clicks with programmatic SEO across Google and AI platforms (Shorty Awards) [source](https://shortyawards.com/18th/daydream-openart-198m-clicks-with-programmatic-seo-across-google-and-ai-platforms) - Twingate — daydream content drives 40,000+ visits/month, 80%+ of non-branded traffic [source](https://www.withdaydream.com) ## Recent moves - **2026-04-02**: Raised a $15M Series A led by WndrCo, with First Round Capital and Basis Set Ventures participating, bringing total funding to $21M. [source](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/daydream-raises-15m-series-a-to-build-the-worlds-best-ai-native-agency-for-seo-302732302.html) - **2026-01-21**: Announced a $3.8M seed led by First Round Capital to build out the SEO agents and the Growth-Lead-per-customer staffing model. [source](https://www.withdaydream.com/article/announcing-our-3-8m-seed) - **2026-01**: Won the Shorty Awards SEO & SEM category plus a Bronze in GEO for the OpenArt campaign, citing nearly 20M organic clicks across Google and AI platforms. [source](https://shortyawards.com/18th/daydream-openart-198m-clicks-with-programmatic-seo-across-google-and-ai-platforms) - **2024-11**: Published the OpenArt case study reporting 1M monthly visits in 8 months built on 600+ programmatic-SEO pages. [source](https://www.withdaydream.com/case-studies/openart) - **2023-12-11**: Announced a $2.5M pre-seed from Basis Set Ventures, WndrCo, SOMA Capital, Hustle Fund, plus angels Lenny Rachitsky and Eli Schwartz. [source](https://www.withdaydream.com/news/announcing-our-2-5m-pre-seed) - **2023-09**: Founded in San Francisco by Thenuka Karunaratne and Shravan Rajinikanth, built first as software to automate programmatic SEO end-to-end. [source](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/thenuka-karunaratne) ## Company, Financials & Funding History Founded September 2023 in San Francisco by CEO Thenuka Karunaratne, who bootstrapped Flixed to 400K+ monthly visitors on programmatic SEO and was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Hustle Fund, and CTO Shravan Rajinikanth, an ex-Meta engineer who worked on Facebook Jobs and Horizon Worlds. | Date | Round | Amount | |---|---|---| | 2026-04 | Series A | $15M (WndrCo), First Round Capital + Basis Set Ventures participating, $21M total | | 2026-01 | Seed | $3.8M (First Round Capital), Basis Set Ventures, WndrCo, Hustle Fund | | 2023-12 | Pre-seed | $2.5M (Basis Set Ventures), WndrCo, SOMA Capital, Hustle Fund, angels Lenny Rachitsky + Eli Schwartz | ## Links [Homepage](https://www.withdaydream.com) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/withdaydream) *Last updated 2026-05-25 · refreshed weekly*