Here’s a business a spreadsheet would tell you not to buy: 18 people in Austin, no software, no institutional backers, just a phone full of relationships and the sales rights to a couple hundred podcasters. This month, a public company in Sweden paid $20M for exactly that.
Market Update: Two AI Rounds That Bracket Where the Money Is Going
Gravity raised $38M to put ads inside AI. The San Francisco company describes itself as an ad network for AI products, roughly $38M total (an $8M seed led by Caffeinated Capital and a $30.5M Series A led by Lightspeed). In plain English, Gravity wants to be the ad network for the AI era: when you’re chatting with an AI assistant, Gravity is the plumbing that drops a relevant ad into the conversation, and how the company that built the app makes money. It’s already placing ads inside ChatGPT and a batch of smaller AI tools. The wild part is the direction: these ads aren’t pointed at human eyes, they’re pointed at your shopping assistant or agent, with brands paying to be the options the agent gets handed. WPP’s media arm thinks AI search advertising is a $100B market by 2030.
Edgify raised $9M to stop theft at checkout. On the commerce side, the London-based company raised a $9M Series A from Rhino Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners. It’s an edge-AI system that runs on a store’s existing cameras to catch scan avoidance and product switching at self-checkout, without streaming video to the cloud. Retail has a huge shrink problem at self-checkout and it’s hard to audit; Edgify wants to make that easier. The caveat: many people have tried putting cameras all over the store to detect this, there are ~20 companies that have gone at it, so it’ll be interesting to see if Edgify actually gets there.
Feature Deal: Acast Buys Backyard Ventures
Acast, the Stockholm-listed podcast company, acquired Backyard Ventures, an Austin-based creator and podcast agency, for a $20M enterprise value deal, $16M cash at close plus $4M later in Acast stock. Because Acast is public and Swedish (which tend to be more transparent), we get the numbers: Backyard did $16.1M of revenue in 2025 at a 12% adjusted EBITDA margin (about $1.9M of EBITDA), which puts the deal at a 10.4x multiple.
What is Acast buying? 18 people in Austin who know American brand marketers, and the sales rights to a 200+ creator roster, names like The Daily Stoic with Ryan Holiday, Piers Morgan Uncensored, Cal Newport’s Deep Questions, and Mark Manson’s Salt. Behind that roster: 35M newsletter subscribers, 230M monthly YouTube views, and 46M monthly simulcast views.
This is the second time in eight weeks that a European buyer has crossed the Atlantic for a creator/podcast agency. We covered Miroma Ad Results Media on the last episode (Ayelet’s favorite of the quarter).
The Operator’s Read
Christian’s read covers strategic value, deal price, comms strategy, and PMI risk.
Strategic value. Acast supplies hosting, distribution, and ad tech globally but has been thin on US brand-marketer relationships. Backyard is exactly that: a sales org that already speaks American brand, plus an exclusive premium roster and true omni-channel reach across audio, YouTube, newsletters, and social. YouTube is another channel where Acast is under-indexed. You’re buying the relationship and the roster, the two things a hosting platform cannot manufacture.
Deal price. At 10.4x EBITDA, it’s a full price for a people-based agency but not outsized against a 65% growth story and a roster with solid creators, and probably fair given the shorter operating history and a founder who clearly understands the economics. Acast de-risked the deal by holding back $4M of the $20M (20%) in deferred stock as the retention handcuff. For software you’d pay 10.4x and shrug; for a people business it’s a high price because the assets walk out the door every night. What justifies it isn’t the ~$1.9M of profit, it’s the relationships, the roster, and the bet that the growth sticks. As a practical matter, a creator can’t easily pick up and walk, these partnerships bring a lot more than someone holding a microphone.
Comms strategy. Acast frames it as extending omni-channel monetization and planting a US flag in Austin (a great talent and innovation economy). The Backyard brand gets retired, the team stays. Clean story, and the right way to do a tuck-in.
PMI risk. Acast has a strong reputation as a strategic, creator-friendly acquirer, and has done technology acquisitions in the global podcast ecosystem. Unlike the tech giants who build closed walls and isolate teams, Acast positions itself as a champion of the open podcast ecosystem, acquisitions that scale monetization and infrastructure for creators rather than trapping them in walled gardens. The roster is mostly exclusive representation on commission, so there’s no long-term contractual moat: if reps and relationships fray, creators drift. But it’s just hard to unplug, someone has to throw material money at you to leave everything that goes into being a creator (Christian and Ayelet can attest, having spent four to five months finding a partner). Most of the PMI risk sits in retaining those 18 people; keep them in Austin with a Stockholm-company feel and that $4M in deferred stock, and they’re probably happy.
The Deal Architect’s Read
From the founder’s perspective: bootstrapped, owns 100%, no institutional investors. The $16M in cash is his, he’s not returning it to a fund. The growth is real, one great name, strong momentum, high value achieved with low contractual locks, which makes it a riskier asset, but he’s stayed true to the model. The real question is whether he cashed out at the right time. Measured against where podcasting multiples sit and the broader media trends, he’s out on the pretty high end.
Is $4M in deferred consideration is enough to keep someone there? No, the $16M in cash was the thing. But given Cisneros’s genuine passion for the industry and his belief in where podcasting is going, along with his belief in Acast’s vision, he was looking at the broader picture. And that vision is sound for the market: it values technology where technology belongs and humans where the human belongs. Podcasting is a human-centric channel; its value lives in the habitual relationship creators have with listeners, the hard-to-recreate human piece, while Acast puts value on the tech (helping advertisers make the right investment and distribution decisions). Through that lens, Backyard got the right buyer at the right time for a good price, and the $4M isn’t the thing to focus on.
Christian’s counterpoint: a founder who owns 100% and is growing 65% usually doesn’t sell at ~10x EBITDA unless he’s worried about something. And what he’d be worried about is real, there aren’t many strategics buying podcast assets right now, and those that are aren’t placing a high value on them. Through that lens, this actually looks like a much better deal. We watch podcast agencies go to market all the time and get a side-eye from both strategics and financial sponsors. Audio and podcasting remain under appreciated; scaled agencies should have this capability, B2B agencies should have it. So maybe Acast is doing the whole category a service by putting a price tag on it and helping create a mark. A bunch of podcasting agencies owe Matt a debt of gratitude for getting a deal done with a public buyer who had to put the numbers out in the market. Hat tip to Chris Erwin for his insights on this deal.
Quick Hits
WPP Burson acquires Limbic. Burson, WPP’s global PR flagship, acquired Limbic, a New York cognitive-AI company whose platform tries to predict a message’s virality and believability before you send it. Terms undisclosed, a capability-led acqui-hire of a two-year co-development partner. Christian was initially excited to see WPP back on the acquisition wagon, this is officially, per PitchBook, WPP’s first “M&A of 2026.” It may not be the splashy return-to-market deal people are hoping for from WPP, but good for them for dipping a toe in the AI pool.
Chief Media acquires AMZ Advisors + its stake in Reach Social. This one’s exciting because we know all the parties well and were on the deal. Chief Media, a New York performance media agency, acquired AMZ Advisors, an Amazon marketplace agency, along with its stake in Reach Social, a TikTok Shop social commerce agency. We covered AMZ acquiring Reach Social on a previous episode, and now Chief came in and bought both. Both teams stay on, with clear synergies and genuine mutual belief; they’ve known and watched each other grow up in the space. Congrats to Scott Paternoster (Chief Media) and Mike Bagg (AMZ).
Hot Tip: these are DealCon OGs. This series, AMZ getting Reach Social, then Chief getting AMZ, is the product of years of relationships built at a conference that teaches agency founders and CEOs how to do M&A themselves.
See All the Deals
Several more deals happened these past couple of weeks, and those are in our subscriber-only post located here,
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Connect with Christian and Ayelet
Ayelet’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-shipley-b16330149/
Christian’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hassold/
