Runable Secures $21M to Accelerate Growth of AI Agents from Startup to Scaling

As artificial intelligence transforms website and app development, the Indian startup Runable is targeting the next challenge: customer acquisition and business expansion. The startup has successfully raised $21 million to advance in this area.

The Series A funding round was co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, with additional backing from existing investors Together Fund and Array VC. Following this all-equity funding, Runable has achieved a valuation of $65 million, as disclosed by co-founder and CEO Umesh Kumar (featured above, right) during an exclusive interview.

Founded in 2025, Runable’s mission is to assist small businesses in a competitive market that includes well-established AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as coding platforms such as Cursor, Lovable, and Replit. The Bengaluru-based startup, backed by a team of 15, aims to go beyond software development with an AI agent capable of sourcing customers, managing ad campaigns, creating presentations, and improving business visibility across search engines, social media, and AI chatbots.

“Ultimately, a business seeks tangible outcomes instead of just coding solutions,” Kumar remarked to TechCrunch. “If I’m spending $10,000 on Google Ads, wouldn’t it be ideal for someone to manage that for me at a reduced cost? That’s where Runable comes in.”

Kumar and co-founder Saksham Sarda (featured above, left) originally launched Runable as an AI infrastructure firm, developing a browser technology designed for efficient data scraping. However, they quickly recognized a growing demand from users for tools to create slide decks and websites using their browser-based agent, which led to a pivot toward a more general-purpose AI solution.

This strategic pivot enabled Runable to achieve an impressive $2 million annualized revenue run rate within just three weeks of launching its payment system in March, according to Kumar.

Currently, Runable’s agent empowers users to generate websites, apps, presentations, and other content using natural language inputs while overseeing vital functions such as deployment and analytics. The startup is now expanding this agent into what they refer to as the “grow” aspect of the business, which involves managing ad campaigns, social media efforts, SEO, and boosting visibility in AI chatbot interactions, among other services.

Kumar emphasized to TechCrunch that the ultimate aim is for small business owners to specify a desired customer acquisition goal, thereby eliminating the need to set up websites, analytics tools, advertising accounts, and marketing campaigns individually.

At present, Runable boasts around 1.7 million registered users, with the U.S., UK, and Japan identified as its largest markets. While it also has users in Brazil, the startup is increasingly narrowing its focus on these three primary markets, expecting Japan to rise as a key market alongside the U.S. in the months ahead.

The challenge of going beyond building

Kumar chose not to reveal Runable’s current revenue data or the number of paying customers. However, he highlighted that in the last 90 days, users have consumed over 1 trillion tokens, with approximately 60% to 70% of that activity coming from paying customers.

This heavy usage comes at a cost, as Kumar acknowledged that Runable is currently operating at a loss in terms of gross margins. This predicament is partly due to the startup subsidizing AI usage for its users. Kumar shared that Runable is exploring different models, including developing its own, and anticipates that falling inference costs will enhance its financial health in the future.

“We are observing a trend where we can provide the same quality of inference at almost 10 times lower costs,” Kumar informed TechCrunch.

A significant challenge for Runable will be standing out, especially as major AI model companies it depends on are increasingly developing their own agents. Nonetheless, Kumar asserted that Runable’s strength lies in efficiently managing the processes needed to deliver measurable outcomes for small businesses—including infrastructure, analytics, and distribution—without requiring users to juggle multiple services.

In a brief evaluation by TechCrunch, the agent was tasked with creating and launching a website for a fictional coffee subscription business, setting up analytics, and attracting its first 100 visitors with a modest $25 ad budget. Runable successfully built the site and devised an ad campaign, but did not execute the campaign, indicating that a linked advertising account was necessary first.

A similar test on Cursor revealed comparable constraints. While Cursor prepared an ad campaign, it necessitated access to a Meta Ads account and payment method, alongside third-party services for permanent website deployment. Runable managed more aspects of website infrastructure on its platform, but still required an external ad account to utilize the advertising budget.

In response to questions regarding this limitation, Runable stated that its capacity to run ads without users linking their advertising accounts is currently available for ads on ChatGPT. The startup mentioned establishing partnerships to facilitate such advertisements, though it refrained from disclosing partner identities, referring to those connections as a “soft wedge.”

Kumar clarified that Runable does not aim to outclass coding agents in their sphere. He indicated that for developers dealing with local files or primarily focused on coding, tools like OpenAI’s Codex or Anthropic’s Claude Code may be more appropriate. However, Runable is targeting non-technical small business owners who may hesitate to configure the necessary tools and services to transform AI-generated outputs into successful businesses.

According to Kumar, general-purpose agents such as Manus and Genspark are seen as Runable’s closest competitors, as they cater to similar user bases and markets. Nevertheless, Runable plans to distinguish itself by employing AI to help businesses in acquiring customers, rather than merely focusing on building with AI.