Levitate Secures $16M Funding for AI Innovation

B2B growth isn’t about more automation or more content alone—it’s about weaving AI-powered insight with human storytelling to spark real conversations with decision-makers. When your tools surface precise pain points, your team must respond with empathy, clarity, and concrete next steps. Startups can leverage AI to map buyer journeys, personalize outreach at scale, and test messages rapidly, but the edge comes from humans interpreting signals, owning the narrative, and building trusted relationships. The fastest path to sustained growth on LinkedIn isn’t a gimmick; it’s a disciplined cadence of meaningful demos, value-led conversations, and consistent, authentic presence that evolves with feedback. Think reductionist, not reductive.

I am all in for human outreach. But I am not anti-automation, because: - You can use automation to enhance the human touch (and do it outside of your account so it's safe) Here are 3 examples where automation enhances the human touch: 1) Lead validation This is a classic repetitive task that is vital, but can easily be done by AI. This already saves 15-45mins a day, depending on volume. 2) Lead research To create personalization, you need to do your research. AI is amazing at providing information that you can then turn into a personalized message. Like content recapping or identifying the lead's ICP for example. This can save 1-3 minutes per lead. 3) Systemization Knowing exactly when to comment on a lead's post or connect with them and having all the conversation context in one place with Extrovert before reaching out. Also, if I need to create a reminder when the lead is not ready to have the conversation today, I set a reminder in Kondo: Superhuman for LinkedIn DMs. Hard to quantify, but can easily save 10-20 mins/day. Human touch does make a huge difference. But seeing automation and AI as enemies of intentional outreach is a mistake. You can use automation to enhance it and free up your time and mental space to focus on leaving intentional comments and DMs to your prospects. P.S. I am teaching how to go from a stranger to clients to my community every week. Comment or DM "system" to receive the Doc of the program.

Today’s B2B marketing truth: the fastest path to growth isn’t louder ads, it’s sharper narratives that empower every stage of the buyer journey with AI-assisted precision. Teams whisper less and listen more—using AI to map buyer intent, tailor value props, and automate follow-ups that feel human. LinkedIn growth isn’t about vanity metrics, it’s about helping peers solve real problems: a carousel that teaches a 10x saving tip, a micro case study that reveals the exact KPI uplift, a thoughtful comment that invites collaboration. Startups leaning into product-led content and revenue teams that co-create content with customers win because trust compounds, not funds. Focus on consistency, relevance, and measurable outcomes.

Today's B2B reality isn't about more data—it's about meaningful micro-experiments that respect a buyer's time. AI can surface signals and craft tailored flows, but the real leverage comes when we pair that precision with human storytelling that respects industry pain points. Startups should treat LinkedIn not as a broadcast channel but as a living conversation: test a single, clear value proposition with a focused segment, iterate in small bets, and measure the actual time-to-value your message creates for operators in the target sector. The fastest path to growth isn't louder content—it's smarter, faster resonance.

B2B growth isn’t about louder ads, it’s about tighter conversations. Startups are learning that AI can lift the quality of every touchpoint—from precise messaging to personalized follow‑ups—without losing the human spark buyers crave. The real shift isn’t just automation; it’s orchestration: using data to decide who to reach, what to say, and when to say it, so each LinkedIn interaction feels like a real, thoughtful connection rather than a mass outreach. If we treat every message as a genuine stake in a conversation, growth follows.

Levitate Secures $16M to Scale Relationship AI Tools Key Points 👇 ❶ Levitate raised $16 million in new funding, bringing total capital raised to $71 million since its founding in 2017. ❷ The AI platform helps over 8,000 businesses manage personalized client communication and relationship marketing at scale. ❸ The round was led by Harbert Growth Partners, with participation from Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Bull City Venture Partners. "Our original thesis was simple: AI should help relationship-based businesses become more consistent, more thoughtful, and more scalable in how they show up for their clients. This investment allows us to build more tools that make AI practical and accessible for small businesses, while continuing to strengthen the Service-as-Software experience our customers rely on." - Jesse Lipson, Founder and CEO of Levitate. https://lnkd.in/eCBCb4xm #AI, #ArtificialIntelligence, #StartupFunding, #VentureCapital, #MarketingTechnology, #SaaS

It's never been easier to build a product than it is now with the help fo AI. And it's never been harder to get in front of the right audience. But if I could give startup founders one piece of advice: Stay away from people who sell you “outbound systems” and promise leads. Distribution doesn’t start with outbound. It starts with strategy. And I mean it. After helping 50+ SaaS and AI companies go from 0 to revenue, this is the system I rely on: 1. GTM Strategy Build the foundation: ICP, positioning, offer, and pricing. 2. Outbound Infrastructure Funnels, CRM, automations, and sequences. 3. Campaign Launch & Testing Messaging, creatives, audiences, offers, pricing — constant testing and optimization. 4. Sales Enablement Capturing leads is only step one. If sales can’t close, revenue still won’t happen. Enabling sales is part of marketing. Once this is in place, something powerful happens: Leads stop being random. Pipeline becomes predictable. This is exactly what we build inside my $0 → Revenue Turnkey 120-day GTM Program. https://lnkd.in/eVgq4QnV If you're an early-stage founder building your first real growth engine, let’s talk. #RevenueOperations #GoToMarket #StartupGrowth

This is something we see constantly when auditing businesses. Founders assume they need “better” leads. But when you actually look under the hood, the interest is already there! BUT, it’s just slipping through the cracks because there’s no SYSTEM built to capture that interest. When the infrastructure is right, growth stops feeling chaotic and starts becoming predictable. Strong post by Sanjana Dave on how our systems changed the game 🎯

Levitate, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based provider of an #AI-powered relationship marketing platform, raised $16M in funding, bringing its total funding to $71M. The round was led by Harbert Growth Partners, with participation from Bull City Venture Partners and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures. The company plans to use the funding to expand its service-as-software model, combining intelligent automation with strategic guidance to help customers achieve improved business outcomes. Led by CEO and Founder Jesse Lipson, Levitate provides a platform designed to help relationship-based businesses strengthen meaningful interactions with clients, donors, referral sources, and prospects. The platform enables users to send emails at scale, post on social media, communicate with clients via text, send surveys and event invitations, generate and manage reviews, schedule meetings, send handwritten cards, track key client details, and manage websites and blogs. Levitate currently serves more than 8,000 businesses. #Levitate #MarketingTech #AI #RelationshipMarketing #StartupFunding #BusinessGrowth #Automation #TechStartup #VentureCapital #SaaS

Automation Is Scaling Outreach, Not Relationships I spend a lot of time looking for interesting ISVs and partners across the world. There is no shortage of innovation, bold ideas, or strong products. What is harder to find is genuine follow-through. Too often, you reach out for a demo, a product discussion, or a partnership conversation, get an instant response, and then hit a dead end. The outreach looks active, but the engagement is not real. That’s detrimental. It wastes time, erodes trust, and buries real opportunities under automated noise. If we want stronger ecosystems and better partnerships, we need fewer automated touchpoints and more human conversations. So how to balance agentic reach out while maintaining the human touch for closing ? The process usually breaks at the handoff point: AI finds targets, sends outreach, scores replies, and queues only “high-confidence” leads for a human, so anything nuanced or partnership-oriented often gets deprioritized. The human then sees an incomplete picture, limited context, or too many inbound threads, and the conversation stalls. Better design means giving the agent clear escalation rules, passing full conversation history to the rep, and assigning one accountable owner for every live high priority response. That turns automation into triage, not a dead end. A fast reply means nothing if the conversation goes nowhere!!