Ex-Credo Partner’s Kontext Raises Over €8M to Lead AI Chatbot Advertising Push – The Recursive
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Czech-founded Kontext, an AI-powered contextual advertising platform, has officially come out of stealth mode with a $10 (€8.61) million seed round, positioning itself as strong player in the emerging AI chatbot advertising market.
The round was led by M13, with participation from Torch Capital, Credo Ventures, and Parable VC. Founded in 2023, the 13-person company plans to use the fresh capital to grow its engineering team and expand into image-based ads, building on its existing text-based contextual ad engine.
“We are excited to lead the charge in powering the next advertising frontier – GenAI consumer companies,” wrote Andrej Kiska on LinkedIn, adding that the platform already processes tens of millions of daily ad impressions for major consumer brands.
Kiska is a former partner of the venture capital fund Credo Ventures, where he has invested in a number of major Czech and foreign startup companies.
Kontext’s approach stands apart from traditional banners or programmatic formats. Ads appear directly inside AI chatbot responses — generated in real time by the same large language model powering the conversation. Instead of interrupting the user journey, Kontext says its ads feel “native” to the chatbot experience.
“Our ads are so special that they don’t cause any user churn, and some users actually crave to see more of them,” Kiska claimed. “Ads are inherently a force for good: they allow consumer products to remain affordable, often free, while allowing even the smallest companies to get discovered.”
The platform already works with Amazon, Uber, and Canva.
With generative AI usage skyrocketing, monetization models for chatbots are still in their early days. Nevertheless, the broader chatbot marketing sector is expected to explode: from roughly $3.6 B in 2024 to over $70 B by 2034 — thanks largely to rising ad-driven use cases embedded in chatbot experiences.
Kontext is betting that the future belongs to contextual, intent-based advertising, served at the precise moment a user’s attention is most engaged.
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