# Cortex

AI-powered visual analytics that helps marketers make better creative choices

## Elevator pitch
Cortex is a B2B SaaS platform used by the some of the world's leading brands to know what images and videos to make, how to make them, and which images and videos to promote with advertising budgets. Brands spend $600 billion every year on visuals without knowing these insights. Much of that $600 billion is wasted and careers can be ruined due to poor performance. With Cortex, that entire $600 billion is de-risked. Brands can invest that money with confidence.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/cortex
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:70427
- Last updated: 2026-06-07T05:02:14Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-08T02:54:48Z

## Quick facts
- Best in class customers - L'Oréal, Marriott, Toyota, Deloitte, Oreo, and more - with $600k run rate
- Founders’ previous company was in the same space and grew fast enough to be on the INC 5000
- Cortex was one of 10 startups accepted into the super competitive Techstars Boston class in 2020
- New world-class customers signing on in the past weeks - including Kraft-Heinz and Pernod Ricard
- Unique technology - the only platform that can predict how people will react to something they see
- Customers renewing and expanding - including L’Oreal, KAO, and Marriott
- Raised $1.2M to date from impressive CEO angel investors, Revup Fund, and Techstars
- 14 major international brands are already in late-stage pipeline for onboarding in 2021

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:37899: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
Cortex is a SaaS platform that uses machine learning to predict the performance of visuals. We help enterprise brands like Toyota, L’Oreal, and Oreo save up to 50% spend by predicting the performance of marketing visuals before a single dollar is spent.We’re growing fast, and we’ll be on target to hit our 2021 target revenue by landing just 10 of the companies in our current pipeline.*The above graphic contains forward-looking projections that cannot be guaranteed46 companies own 2,165 total brands in our target industries, making every account we close a significant landmark. Here’s a look at our current pipeline:We’ve developed a robust business model that will enable us to scale effectively year over year. Here’s how it works:We’ve carved out a unique niche in the $600B global advertising market, and demand for visual content in this market is growing at a rate of 30% per year.Our collective expertise spans decades, and we’ve built the expert team needed to make Cortex the right investment for your portfolio.Over the next 18 months, we will remain laser focused on repeatedly executing our sales playbook. It works, we have many world class customers to reference, and we have identified 46 specific companies in those same industries that we will target. Selling to a fraction of those 46 will allow us to achieve our 2021 and 2022 goals. As we do that, we’ll continue plugging our software API into other creative software and get paid per use. We have two examples of this in place already. Long term, this will allow us to make high margin revenue every time creatives use any software, be it our platform or others.

## FAQ
1. **Very interested in this opportunity. Some questions before I pull the trigger investment-wise: 1. Historically, what percent of your customers have renewed their annual subscription? What's currently the longest tenure? 2. Do you plan to offer any services to companies on a "o...**
   - Many thanks for your thoughtful questions, Kenneth. To jump right in: 1. 100% of customers using Cortex Studio have renewed, but that’s not the right metric to use here. Our current annual subscription packages are somewhat new and most customers are in their first year, so a renewal percentage isn’t a large sample set. We do have many proof points of customers wanting more. For example, we’ve recently had extension and/or expansion from all of the recent renewal opportunities, including comp...
2. **Hi Cortex Team, Congrats on the success so far. B2B/Marketing SaaS has become one of my main investment theses, so I was particularly excited to check out Cortex. One of my readers passed along your deal to me and asked for my thoughts. I'm writing a first pass of a deal memo ...**
   - Hi Muhan, As you suggested, we’ve reached out to you directly for some of your more detailed questions, but I’ll also include a few points below. Regarding the short-term debt, you can see in Cortex’s reviewed financials that this was actually not an increase in debt, but simply convertible notes moving from long-term to short-term debt on the balance sheet. Cortex had no meaningful increase in total debt in 2019 and, as described in the disclosures, all convertible notes were converted durin...
3. **Hi, Exciting company and congratulations on the revenue growth. I'm doing some due diligence with a friend and have a few questions to start: 1) From your revenue figures, it looks like you have 11 employees making. Could you comment on number of employees in relation to the s...**
   - Hi Moe, Thanks for your questions. 1) We currently have 12 employees, seven of those employees are focused on product/engineering and that team includes some full-time off-shore developers to allow us to be super efficient with our money while delivering the best possible product to our customers. Also, note that the two founders are not taking a salary yet. 2) We currently have 11 full time employees and 1 part time employee. Both Brennan and Matt are full time. 3) Most of our debt was in th...
4. **Hi Cortex Team, To me the value proposition stacks up. The question then becomes whether the technology works. Would be fantastic if you could advise on the following questions: 1. What is your churn rate? 2. What is your net promoter score (if available)? 3. What percentage o...**
   - Thanks for the kind words, Max. 1 + 3. (I’ve combined parts of your first and third questions. Also, I’ve pasted from a similar question in this forum, then added to it.) 100% of customers using Cortex Studio have renewed, but that’s not the right metric to use here. Our current annual subscription packages are somewhat new and most customers are in their first year, so a renewal percentage isn’t a large sample set. We have many proof points of customers wanting more. For example, we’ve recen...
5. **Hi, lots to like here, congrats on your success so far. Can you say a little more about your moat: Any plans to patent anything? Can you give a laymen's explanation of why the data you've collected gives you a lasting advantage? Anything else about why it would be hard for a d...**
   - Hi Alan, thanks for your questions. Here’s a little more information. Firstly, yes, Cortex may be pursuing some patents on the technology in the near future, specifically around some of the novel video processing technology we’ve created. Regarding the data, the moat gets bigger every day. Cortex collects massive amounts of data from publicly available sources (like social media) and then uses machine learning to generate proprietary data about the initial data that no one else has. The more ...

## Team
- Brennan White (CEO)
- Matt Peters (Chief Customer Officer)
- Dimitry Kudryavtsev (VP of Engineering)
- Dung Phan (Lead Data Scientist)
- John Lahr (VP of Growth)
- Herman Uscategui (Senior Vice President Strategic Ventures)

## Recent posts
- MAUs up by 26.6% in October! (2022-11-03T15:10:48Z)
- Cortex Selected to Pitch Major Brands in Zurich (2022-10-14T18:45:57Z)
- 30% MAU Growth in September (2022-10-05T18:57:04Z)
- Cortex one of "The 19 most promising advertising and marketing tech startups of 2022, according to VCs" (2022-09-28T21:31:46Z)
- Cortex Usage Beats Estimates! (2022-09-16T17:58:00Z)
- Cortex-Free is LIVE + Growing, Cortex's Total Addressable Market is huge! (2022-08-23T00:50:14Z)
- Building A Free Cortex (2022-07-13T15:41:55Z)
- New Product Capabilities - Demographics! (2022-05-02T16:27:00Z)
- Thanks! - Cortex Lands a New Reseller - WON (2022-03-08T15:27:18Z)
- L'Oréal Renews - One Day Left (2022-02-21T21:45:21Z)
- 900 Investors! THANK YOU (2022-02-21T21:24:26Z)
- TWO DAYS LEFT! - A Customer Returns for More - John Frieda (2022-02-21T01:11:58Z)
- 3 Days Left! - Creative Insights for Crowdfunders, Straight from Cortex (2022-02-19T22:33:16Z)
- 4 DAYS LEFT - Cortex adds a customer - Insign LA (2022-02-18T17:46:58Z)
- Cortex Adds a Customer - Ben & Jerry's - 6 Days Left! (2022-02-18T00:37:10Z)

## Q&A
- Q: Hi Matt, thanks for the thoughtful answer. I am glad to have invested and may do more. The more I think about it, the more I like your moat - having that amount of data may be even better than a patent because there is no work-around when it comes to data! Can you clarify a few things from your financials? At a run rate of 31K/month it would appear that your revenue for 2020 will be lower than 2019. Am I understanding that correctly? Also, your monthly burn now is 84K, so even if this doesn't improve you have 4-5 months of cash in the bank and another 4-5 months raised here. You hope to be profitable in 10 months, but you also think it's likely you'll need to raise more money. These two projections seem to say different things. Finally, your projection gets to around 200K/month revenue starting in March, as opposed to 30-50K now. What are the expenses that go up that prevent another 150K or more of revenue erasing the 84K burn?
  - A: Thanks Alan, we’re excited to have you on the journey with us. We agree that having the data moat is the strongest moat out there! Happy to further clarify some things. Our projections are aligned, but I can see the confusion. We do expect to be profitable this year, But simultaneously, we will likely raise more capital to expand our lead in the market. There is a lot to be said for fueling super aggressive growth which might be best achieved with new capital from a Series A. Achieving profitability gives us flexibility and allows us to raise from a position of strength. Regarding burn, I just want to clarify that we are projecting $200k in revenue in Q1 of this year, not $200k/month in revenue. However, even with that clarification, our revenue growth over the next three quarters will erase our net burn, hence getting to profitability. The burn isn’t instantly erased because we’re hiring and increasing our advertising spend at the same time as the revenue is jumping up.
- Q: any chance to get an answer to my question from 19 feb? thanks
- Q: Hi, Exciting company and congratulations on the revenue growth. I'm doing some due diligence with a friend and have a few questions to start: 1) From your revenue figures, it looks like you have 11 employees making. Could you comment on number of employees in relation to the size of the company and the $464k payroll breakdown? 2) How many are full time vs part time employees? Are Brennan and Matthew full time or part time? 3) Putting the convertible notes aside, you have about $350k of current debt that is due within a year. How do you plan on paying this back? If it is from the proceeds of this round, how much do you think you'll have left to help with the company's growth? 4) Where are the $115k goodwill coming from? Did your company acquire another company and if so, can you elaborate? Thanks, Moe
  - A: Hi Moe, Thanks for your questions. 1) We currently have 12 employees, seven of those employees are focused on product/engineering and that team includes some full-time off-shore developers to allow us to be super efficient with our money while delivering the best possible product to our customers. Also, note that the two founders are not taking a salary yet. 2) We currently have 11 full time employees and 1 part time employee. Both Brennan and Matt are full time. 3) Most of our debt was in the form of convertible notes, all of which converted into equity during our equity round in August 2020. At this time the only major debt is the RevUp note listed in our disclosures. We do not anticipate any need to use proceeds from this round to pay debt. 4) The original technology for Cortex was developed at the founders’ first company. We spun that technology out into its own company (Cortex). For this spinout, we had the technology/IP/assets independently valued, which is where the $115k number comes from.
- Q: Where can I find a copy of the dissolution paperwork? The link has expired, and I lost track of the one I had previously.
- Q: Good Morning or it is in my world of Alaska, I was just wondering if you had any recent updates. I haven't heard from you for a very long time and I like to hear from my investments once in awhile I get a little lonely when I don't hear anything, any news you'd like to share????? Mary Richards Wasilla Alaska
- Q: wow interesting that I stumbled onto a new cortex raise over on republic ... maybe we should have received some communication??
  - A: We were waiting until the platform fixed some bugs around committing (most of the investing options were disabled). Now that they're fixed, the updates just went out. Thanks to all who found us already. We've seen several familiar folks in the round already.
- Q: What is happening, I have not heard any updates?
  - A: We've recently teased out our next slew of updates. Many more to come around our upcoming fundraise. Stay tuned.
- Q: Crickets ....
  - A: We've just shot out our teaser update to everyone. Lots of news to come. Thanks for your patience.
- Q: just missed out will there be another round ?
  - A: Hi Ali, Good news - yes. We've just shared an update about that. Stay tuned to see how you will be able to participate.
  - A: Two weeks left in the 2nd Campaign. I'm following up here so you get the chance if you're still interested. https://republic.com/cortex
- Q: Do you have social media pages (Facebook, Instagram) that we can share?
  - A: We generally stick to Twitter and Linkedin, but aren't super active on either quite yet: https://www.linkedin.com/company/11218803 https://twitter.com/meetcortex Please feel free to follow us and/or share!
- Q: Do you intend to pay a dividend?
- Q: Hi , Looking forward to invest in your cool company , I have 2+ questions: - Any plans to tackle the affective computing industry ? - The 600k revenue … is solely coming from Cortex API licensing? if yes, can you be so kind to detailthe amount on upsell / renewal/new business ? Thank you, Vlad
- Q: Hi Brennen, Great initiative! As you know I have a keen interest in the automated creative content research and testing space. There is so much waste in this domain with publishing creatives that do not work as well as those that are based on research/testing. Regarding the investment - can you share some details around governance such as: how often the board meets, are annual shareholder meeting dates set, how are decisions made....?
- Q: Hi Matt, You and your team have an awesome vision - one that will take Cortex places. I just added to my investment and may investment before funding closes in about a week or so. I think you may have already answered this question, but I will ask anyway just for clarification. At what rate do you see your quarterly revenue grow in terms of percentage? I know it is hard to quantify future revenue, but perhaps you can give me a ballpark figure. In the meantime, great job on extending your contract with Toyota. I hope that the Olympics will happen in Japan this year. Keep up the good work!
  - A: Hi Jilani, thanks for your question and investment! Glad to have you along for the ride. Our annual goals for the next two years (broken down by quarter) are in the Overview section of this Wefunder profile. You can check that out for more detail if you'd like. That said, we're targeting a tripling of revenue this year and another tripling the following year as well. Thanks so much for the kind words about Toyota. We're excited to work with such a tremendous brand and share your hope for the Olympics!
- Q: What if any is your “unfair competitive advantage”?
  - A: We have three that I'd call out here. 1. We're the only technology that predicts how humans will react to something that they see. This was a huge breakthrough to build that hasn't been replicated by other parties. 2. Our data and machine learning model lead - We have dozens of partnerships and proprietary data from dozens of the world's best brands that others don't have access to. The system automatically determines where custom machine learning models are needed, so our years building this product have created an uncatchable lead. 3. Our Team - with the core Cortex team we combined rare machine learning academic experience with unique ML product experience, award winning content creation work, with top-tier enterprise sales capability to global brands. That combination of extremely rare skills gives us a very unfair advantage