Marketers waste 40% of their time on presentations. This AI startup just raised $3.8M to solve the copy-paste grind forever.
What’s happening: Trans-Tasman startup Aether has raised $3.8 million in seed funding to transform how marketing teams create presentations, turning static PowerPoint decks into living, connected assets that automatically update with real-time data and eliminate repetitive research tasks.
Why this matters: As AI startups continue breaking funding records, Aether’s solution addresses a universal pain point where marketing professionals waste up to 40% of their time on manual presentation creation and data compilation, resources that could be redirected to actual marketing strategy and execution.
When Carsten Grueber, former Country Manager of TikTok New Zealand, interviewed hundreds of marketing leaders across enterprise businesses, a pattern emerged that would reshape his career trajectory.
Marketing teams were drowning in a sea of repetitive presentation work, losing valuable data insights, and constantly battling outdated information embedded in static decks.
“They say measure twice, cut once, and this should also be true of marketing workflows,” says Grueber, who co-founded Aether to solve what he calls the “presentation problem.” “As it stands, most slide decks are recut every time a presentation happens, wasting valuable resources from internal teams.”
Already generating serious revenue
Launched out of New+Improved, the venture studio behind successful martech companies Tracksuit and Ideally, Aether has emerged from stealth with impressive early traction. The company is already generating over $600,000 in annual recurring revenue and has secured contracts with major enterprise customers across Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Led by Icehouse Ventures with additional backing from Brand Fund 2, the $3.8 million seed round positions Aether as the first official spin-out from the recently minted New+Improved venture studio.
“Instead of marketers spending half a week building the monthly performance report, they can spend that same time doing the actual marketing itself,” Grueber explains.
Three problems, one solution
Aether tackles what the company identifies as three pervasive issues plaguing large organisations: institutional amnesia where valuable data insights are lost or under-utilised, wasted productivity on repetitive research production, and outdated information embedded in static presentations.
The platform integrates live data directly into presentation and document workflows, eliminating what Grueber calls “the manual copy-paste grind” that can consume up to 40% of marketers’ time.
“In minutes, Aether can take 150 marketing reports, in 12 different languages and distil it all down to the 10 slides that actually matter,” Grueber says. The platform can also “assess and strengthen your latest idea, plan or brief against your marketing strategy; or create exec-ready presentations reporting last month’s performance with key charts and commentary.”
Aether positions itself as solving the presentation problem similarly to how Figma revolutionised design collaboration and Notion transformed project management. Once plugged into datasets, the platform creates customisable presentations using a business’s branding within minutes, with presentations automatically updating as underlying data refreshes.
Early customers are using Aether for board packs, quarterly business reviews, campaign reports, agency briefs and knowledge management – tasks that traditionally drain resources and delay decision-making.
The founding team brings substantial SaaS scaling expertise. Co-founder Ursula von Keisenberg previously served as ANZ Managing Director at Timely and Emerging Markets Sales Lead at Xero Asia, while Chief Revenue Officer Daniel Alexander-Head rounds out the executive team after his time at Qualtrics as Regional Sales Manager APJ and Vision Critical as VP Sales.
“This is the dream intersection of clear problem, scalable solution, and strong team,” says Barnaby Marshall, Partner at Icehouse Ventures. “Aether is solving a universal pain point, and the traction they’ve achieved with global enterprise customers before launch is remarkable.”
Trans-Tasman success story
With more than half of its revenue already coming from Australia, Aether represents a true trans-Tasman operation with global aspirations. The company joins a growing cohort of AI-focused businesses attracting significant funding as investors recognise the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in solving workplace inefficiencies.
“Aether represents a bigger opportunity than any of us have seen before,” says New+Improved co-founder Simon Pound. “Now, with strong revenue, big global enterprise customers, and the backing of major investors, we’re ready to scale. We believe Aether could be the next breakout SaaS success story from this region.”
The seed funding will accelerate product development and expand the global team, currently spread across Australia and New Zealand, as Aether works to transform presentations from static documents into what Grueber calls “living, connected assets that are accurate, always up-to-date, and ready to share.”
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