Runable raises $21M to help small businesses grow with AI agents

Indian startup targets business growth, not just building

Bengaluru-based Runable has raised $21 million in Series A funding to expand an AI agent platform designed to help small businesses not just build digital products, but actually find customers and grow. The round was co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Together Fund and Array VC.

The all-equity funding valued the 15-person company at $65 million post-money, according to co-founder and CEO Umesh Kumar in an interview first reported by TechCrunch.

Founded in 2025, Runable initially started as an AI infrastructure company building browser technology for data scraping. The founders pivoted after noticing users increasingly requested their browser-based agent to create slide decks and websites. That shift proved timely: within three weeks of launching payments in March, Runable reached a $2 million annualized revenue run rate, Kumar stated.

Beyond code generation to customer acquisition

Runable operates in a crowded market alongside AI coding platforms like Cursor, Lovable, and Replit, plus agents from Anthropic and OpenAI. But Kumar argues the startup's differentiation lies in what happens after software creation: running ad campaigns, managing social media, handling SEO, and optimizing presence in AI chatbot results.

"In the end, a business doesn't require Codex or Claude Code or anything. They require real outcomes," Kumar told TechCrunch. "If I am paying an agency $10,000 to run my Google Ads, can someone come in and do it for me for a lower price? That's where Runable comes in."

The platform currently allows users to build websites, apps, and presentations through natural language prompts while handling deployment and analytics infrastructure. The startup is now extending into what it calls the "grow" side—running advertising, managing social channels, and driving customer acquisition.

Runable reports 1.7 million registered users, with the U.S., UK, and Japan as its largest markets. Users consumed over 1 trillion tokens in the past 90 days, with 60% to 70% coming from paying customers, according to Kumar. He declined to disclose current revenue or exact customer counts.

Why it matters

Runable's approach highlights a critical gap in the AI agent market: most tools help create digital products, but small business owners still face the complex work of connecting analytics, advertising accounts, payment systems, and marketing channels. If Runable can genuinely automate customer acquisition—not just website generation—it addresses a higher-value problem than coding assistants alone. However, the startup currently operates with negative gross margins due to subsidizing AI usage, and still requires users to connect external advertising accounts for most campaigns, limiting its end-to-end automation promise.

Economics and competition challenges

Kumar acknowledged Runable currently has negative gross margins, partly because it subsidizes AI usage for customers. The company is working with a mix of third-party models while developing its own, betting that falling inference costs will improve economics over time.

In testing, TechCrunch found Runable could build and deploy a website for a fictional coffee subscription business and prepare an ad campaign, but stopped short of running ads without connecting an external advertising account. The startup said its ability to run ads without customer-connected accounts currently works only for ChatGPT ads through undisclosed partnerships.

Kumar identified general-purpose agents like Manus and Genspark as closest competitors, rather than coding-focused tools. He said Runable targets nontechnical small business owners who want outcomes without configuring multiple tools and services themselves.

Details were first reported by Jagmeet Singh at TechCrunch.