Marketing Agencies Are Drowning in AI Tools. Epiminds’ 20 More Might Just Be The Answer
Epiminds raises $6.6m for Lucy – an AI manager leading 20+ agents for end-to-end marketing automation – promising faster ROI, sharper insight and less grind.
Nearly two-thirds of marketing agencies cite data quality and fragmentation as their top barrier to AI adoption, according to the IAB State of Data 2025 report. Only 30% have fully integrated AI across the media campaign lifecycle. Clients want transparency and measurable ROI, budgets are shrinking and marketers spend more time buried in dashboards than working on campaigns.
Stockholm-based Epiminds just raised $6.6 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners with a counterintuitive pitch: the solution to too many AI tools is 20+ AI agents working together. Founded by Google and Spotify alumni Elias Malm and Mo Elkhidir, the startup went from ideation to managing 240+ brands in just 12 weeks, raising questions about whether multi-agent orchestration represents a genuine technical breakthrough or another layer of complexity.
From Weekend Project to $6.6 Million in Funding
Malm ran an agency before leading Google’s Nordic agency partnerships, where he watched talented teams buried in busywork. Elkhidir, a Sudanese-born machine learning expert, spent years researching multi-agent systems at Spotify and Kry, teaching AI agents to collaborate on complex tasks. During a weekend project, they simulated Sweden’s 10.8 million citizens in AI, each with hundreds of attributes. When they discovered 23,400 of them were marketers, the idea crystallised: an AI-powered marketing workforce that could free real marketers to focus on creativity and planning.
Epiminds secured backing from Lightspeed Venture Partners, EWOR (which accepts just 0.1% of applicants, or 35 entrepreneurs out of 35,000 annually), Entourage and angels including Booking.com’s former CMO. The $6.6 million round came together in just 12 weeks from ideation – exceptional timing even in the AI era where digital transformation and AI adoption are becoming more common.
Lucy and Her Team of 20+ Specialists
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Epiminds built Lucy, an AI marketing manager that leads more than 20 specialised agents handling reporting, optimisations, budget pacing, bidding and creatives. Agencies can onboard a client in under 30 seconds and get an AI-powered marketing team capable of running campaigns from start to finish. Lucy executes insights rather than just surfacing them, learns each agency’s playbooks and proactively monitors accounts to flag risks before they hurt performance.
Traditional dashboards and optimisers remain siloed, requiring heavy manual work. Multi-agent systems create an operational layer that automates workflows and decision-making across platforms, acting as coordinated teams rather than isolated tools. Industry data shows 62% of companies expect over 100% ROI from AI marketing tools, with 80% of marketers expressing satisfaction with AI-powered marketing automation.
John Axelsson, founder and CEO of BBO, said: ‘We’ve integrated EpiMinds into our advertising workflows. It has really started transforming how our specialists work by automating analysis and surfacing deep actionable insights, whilst we remain in control of decisions. The result is faster optimisation, more effective collaboration between human expertise and AI, and ultimately better outcomes for our clients.’
Jenny Dettervik, media lead at Remotion, added: ‘EpiMinds has become a valuable part of our workflow. By automating parts of our agency’s know-how through AI agents, we can get insights faster, optimise more efficiently and deliver higher quality to our clients.’
Lightspeed Doubles Down on AI Agents
Paul Murphy, partner at Lightspeed, said: ‘As a former founder who relied heavily on performance marketing, I saw firsthand how difficult it is to scale campaigns across dozens of channels and geographies. Epiminds’ multi-agent approach directly tackles that challenge. We believe Epiminds has the potential to redefine how marketing gets done in the AI era.’
AI agent companies focused on marketing and content automation are trading at high 20s to low 30s EV/revenue multiples in mid-2025, according to Finrofca research. This valuation tier reflects measurable ROI and deep integration with marketing tech stacks, sitting below premium categories like developer tools but above lower valuation niches.
The timing matters because legacy tools require heavy manual work whilst AI adoption remains uneven. Gartner predicts over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027, mainly due to escalating costs, unclear business value and inadequate risk controls. Epiminds faces the challenge of proving multi-agent orchestration can deliver sustained value rather than adding another vendor to manage.
The company plans to expand Lucy’s capabilities across more integrations, increase autonomy and add self-improving features. Each addition strengthens the entire system, creating a network effect where every agency benefits from smarter, more capable AI.
The Operating System for Marketing or Another Tool in the Stack?
Malm said: ‘We’re building Epiminds because we see where marketing is headed. The future is about dynamic, agentic teams that analyse, plan, execute and improve in real time. Every marketer should have access to a 24/7 AI workforce that frees up their time for creativity. Our goal is to give them that future, today.’
Whether orchestrated multi-agent systems represent a genuine technical breakthrough or simply repackage complexity under a new architecture remains to be seen. The 240 brands now using the platform will provide the first real-world answer. Agencies report faster onboarding, better performance, less wasted spend and teams refocusing on creativity – but the question remains whether adding 20+ AI agents solves fragmentation or creates new challenges in marketing ROI measurement and vendor dependency.
basis points (seven percentage points) better loss ratios, 32% higher gross written premiums per underwriter, and 85% faster underwriting cycles. For insurers, such gains directly boost profitability and operational efficiency. The platform’s real-world deployments (not just pilots) support high submission volumes without escalating overhead, as evidenced by Kinetic handling $1 billion in annual submissions.
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