The first wave of the artificial intelligence boom was defined by breakthroughs in models. The second has been marked by an explosion of AI-powered applications. Velocity believes the next phase will center on something less visible, but just as important: the infrastructure that enables those applications to grow into viable businesses.
The startup has raised $27 million in seed funding to pursue that vision. The round was led by NFX and Red Dot Capital Partners, with participation from Stardom Ventures, Corner Ventures, and Transcend. The investment will support Velocity’s effort to build monetization and distribution infrastructure for AI-native software.
Founded by Tal Shoham, Amir Shaked, and Nimrod Zuta, the company brings together leaders who previously spent more than a decade developing monetization, advertising, and growth technologies at ironSource and Unity. Their latest venture is built on the premise that AI companies face a challenge that previous generations of software largely avoided: serving rapidly growing audiences while managing increasingly expensive computing costs.
AI’s Rapid Adoption Has Created a New Business Challenge
Generative AI has dramatically accelerated software development, making it possible for companies to launch new products at unprecedented speed. But the economics behind those products have become increasingly complex.
Many AI applications attract millions of users, yet only a relatively small percentage pay for subscriptions. Meanwhile, inference costs continue to climb as models become more capable and users expect increasingly sophisticated responses.
To balance those economics, developers often restrict free access through prompt limits, feature gates, or subscription requirements. Velocity believes those measures can unintentionally reduce user engagement and make long-term growth more difficult.
The company’s answer is not to replace subscriptions but to supplement them. By introducing an additional revenue stream through advertising designed specifically for conversational AI, Velocity says developers can offer users more value before asking them to subscribe.
Building Infrastructure Around Intent
Central to Velocity’s platform is the idea that AI conversations expose user intent more clearly than previous digital experiences.
Instead of inferring interests from browsing activity or cookies, the company’s technology analyzes what users are actively trying to accomplish during conversations with AI. Those insights are translated into structured, privacy-safe signals that can support contextual recommendations integrated directly into AI interactions.
To accomplish this, Velocity has developed three interconnected components: an AI-native advertising network for intent-driven placements, a mediation and auction layer that optimizes revenue across demand sources, and a conversation intelligence layer that processes multi-turn conversations.
Tal Shoham, CEO and co-founder, believes this represents a broader shift in the software industry.
“AI is becoming the dominant interface for software, creating entirely new opportunities around monetization and distribution,” Shoham said. “We believe the biggest opportunity of the AI era will not only be building products, but also monetizing and distributing them. We’re building the infrastructure layer that helps solve both.”
He added that monetization should enhance AI interactions rather than interrupt them.
“AI monetization should feel native to the experience,” Shoham said. “Users expect AI interactions to be useful, contextual, and trustworthy. Our goal is monetization, recommendations, and product discovery that enhance the experience rather than interrupt it.”
Early Customers Offer Positive Feedback
Velocity says its platform is already being used by AI-native applications seeking to diversify revenue while preserving user engagement.
Among those customers is Leadtech / MAU. Diego Díaz, CEO of the Subscription Division at Leadtech / MAU, said the company has found Velocity to be “responsive, collaborative, and moves quickly.” He added that the partnership has left his team impressed by both the technology and the people behind it and expressed confidence that it will produce meaningful results.
Another customer, AIBY’s Chaton application, has also reported encouraging outcomes.
Artsiom Turavets, Lead Product Manager at AIBY (Chaton), said the platform has delivered “strong performance while maintaining a high-quality user experience.” He noted that the company has achieved “meaningful monetization outcomes alongside healthy engagement and retention metrics,” while describing Velocity as a responsive partner that consistently develops customized solutions.
Investors See a Long-Term Platform Shift
The investors participating in the round believe AI-native software will create demand for infrastructure companies that address growth, monetization, and distribution.
Gigi Levy-Weiss, General Partner at NFX, said every major technology platform has generated new infrastructure categories. He believes AI-native applications are creating one of the largest technology platforms in history and said Velocity is building “the growth infrastructure layer that enables that intent to drive monetization, distribution, and growth.”
Red Dot Capital Partners shares a similar outlook. Partner Atad Peled said AI-native applications are creating “a massive new opportunity around user intent,” adding that the founders’ experience building and scaling global software platforms positions the company to help define the category.
For Velocity, the long-term ambition extends beyond helping developers improve monetization. The company argues that intent will become the defining signal of AI, much as keywords transformed search and identity shaped social networking.
“Every major platform has been built around a dominant signal,” Shoham said. “We believe the AI era will be built around intent, and we’re building the growth infrastructure layer to monetize and distribute through it.”
