pubX, which builds agent-to-agent infrastructure for advertising, today announced a $5 million Series A led by Chicago Ventures and the acquisition of Compliant, the media quality and governance company. Buyer and seller agents transact directly on infrastructure built for agents, governed on both sides of every buy, with Compliant's media quality and governance signals in every decision.
pubX builds the agents that plan, buy, sell and optimize advertising — and the infrastructure they transact on. Its buyer agents and seller agents work directly with one another, from brief to reporting, across every channel, so that more of every dollar reaches the media and the publisher behind it. pubX began on the publisher side, spending years helping publishers price and sell their inventory. Compliant, founded by former Unilever and P&G executives, has focused principally on the demand side, delivering measurable value to global brands and their agencies.
The acquisition unites brand and publisher in one company, and that experience, on both sides of the market is what shaped the company's vision for something new: infrastructure designed from the ground up for agents to buy and sell directly. Built on the open Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), it works for buyer and seller alike.
pubX was built on the premise that no one hands their media budget to a system they don't trust, so trust, transparency, and accountability are built into the infrastructure itself, on both sides of every transaction. Its agents are educated by pubX: governance checks on every buy, decisions that are reasoned, traced and auditable, with Compliant's quality signals shaping what they consider. The agents are guided by the client, on the brand's own brief, plan, publishers and commercial rules.
"Programmatic took this industry from fax machines and spreadsheets into more automated and real-time platforms in two short decades, and everything we've done since builds on that premise," said Andrew Mole, CEO and co-founder of pubX. "Agents let us finish what was started. You tell them how you buy, you sign off where it matters, and every page of the brief gets read every single time."
"For years, brands have searched for high-quality, high-performing inventory with real, relevant and engaged audiences. Compliant built the Data Integrity and CTV Quality Indexes so that they could do that with certainty rather than speculation," said Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant. "Inside pubX, those media quality and governance signals sit in the decision itself, so an agent weighs them before it buys."
The funding will support pubX's expansion in the United States, the build-out of its demand-side business serving brands and agencies, continued development of its buyer and seller agents on AdCP, and the integration of Compliant's signals across the platform.
About pubX
pubX builds agent-to-agent infrastructure for advertising. Its buyer and seller agents, educated by pubX, trained by the client, and governed on both sides of every transaction, let brands, agencies and publishers plan, buy, sell and optimize media directly, with trust earned one campaign at a time.
About Compliant
Compliant, a pubX company, is the media quality and governance company behind the Data Integrity and CTV Quality Indexes, used by leading global advertisers and industry bodies to measure data integrity and media quality across the supply chain.
About Chicago Ventures
Chicago Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund founded to fill a market gap in early-stage capital for tech companies outside traditional hubs like Silicon Valley, focusing on undercapitalized tech ecosystems in the Central U.S. and beyond. They lead seed rounds "before it's obvious" and operate a formal platform function that serves as a direct extension of portfolio companies' teams, with their network explicitly architected to provide customer introductions, expert help, and talent access at scale rather than just for sourcing deals.
