AI-Powered User Acquisition Is Entering a New Era as Kohort Raises $7M

Introduction

The mobile growth industry is entering a new phase where AI is no longer just helping marketers analyze campaigns. It is starting to actively run them.
That shift is exactly what mobile user acquisition platform Kohort⁠ is betting on after announcing a $7 million Series A funding round focused on building AI-powered user acquisition agents for mobile studios. The investment was led by The Raine Group⁠, which also participated in Kohort’s earlier seed round.

The Rise of AI-Powered User Acquisition

The company specializes in mobile analytics, forecasting, and campaign optimization. Its flagship product, "Ktrl" is designed to help marketers automate one of the hardest parts of user acquisition: making fast, accurate bidding and ROAS optimization decisions across ad networks.
According to reporting from PocketGamer.biz⁠, Kohort’s AI systems are trained on more than $6 billion in historical user acquisition spend across hundreds of mobile games. The company says its platform has already managed over $1 billion in annual user acquisition spend during beta testing across late 2025 and early 2026.
For the AI Growth Association, this announcement reflects a much larger trend happening across the mobile growth ecosystem: AI is evolving from a reporting tool into an operational layer for marketing teams.
Traditionally, user acquisition managers spend countless hours reviewing campaign performance, adjusting bids, analyzing ROAS signals, and deciding which campaigns to scale or pause. As campaigns expand across multiple channels and regions, that process becomes increasingly difficult to manage manually.
Kohort believes AI agents can dramatically reduce that workload.

Why Agentic UA is becoming the next Big Trend

Co-founder Jan Pickard explained that campaign management remains one of the biggest time drains in mobile growth because teams are constantly monitoring dozens or even hundreds of campaigns. Ktrl aims to automate much of that loop by identifying which campaigns should scale, which should be cut, and what performance signals should be fed back into advertising platforms.
That matters because small inefficiencies in user acquisition can quietly become very expensive over time.
Kohort CEO Dan Marcus described the issue as a series of compounding delays and missed signals. Campaigns often continue spending because teams lack the time or predictive insight to react quickly enough. AI systems that process data continuously can shorten that feedback loop and help marketers make faster decisions with less wasted spend.
This growing focus on “agentic UA” is becoming one of the most important conversations in mobile growth.
Across the industry, companies are increasingly exploring AI systems that can move beyond dashboards and recommendations into workflow execution. Instead of simply identifying trends, these tools can actively suggest budget reallocations, optimize bidding strategies, and surface profitable audiences in near real time.
Still, Kohort is careful not to position AI as a full replacement for human marketers.

Final Takeaway: Human Oversight still matters

Marcus emphasized that enterprise advertisers still need reliability, oversight, and operational control. Rather than fully autonomous systems, the company sees the future as AI-supported decision-making where automation handles repetitive analysis while growth teams maintain strategic direction.
That perspective aligns closely with broader industry discussions happening across the AI Growth Association community. As mobile growth becomes more data-intensive and fragmented across platforms, the ability to combine predictive AI with human judgment is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage.
The bigger takeaway is clear: the next generation of user acquisition platforms will likely look less like analytics dashboards and more like intelligent operating systems built to help growth teams move faster, reduce inefficiencies, and scale profitably.

Sources:
https://www.kohort.io

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/exclusive-kohort-raises-7m-to-build-ua-ai-agents-for-mobile/

https://www.raine.com