Swivel

Swivel, formerly known as PilotDesk, is a New York-based adtech startup headquartered at 105 West 86th Street that provides a no-code AI workflow automation platform for advertising operations and account management. Founded in 2023 by Joe Hirsch, Matt Dearborn, and Rich Lin, the team behind SpringServe, the leading video ad server acquired by Magn... ite in 2021, Swivel rebranded from PilotDesk in April 2025 to signal the next chapter of building more intelligent systems that prevent the need for staff to swivel-chair between multiple ad platforms and enable powerful automation in revenue operations at scale. The company is joined by President Frans Vermeulen, a veteran of TransUnion, TruOptik, and FreeWheel, and CTO Geir Magnusson Jr., formerly of AppNexus, fuboTV, and SourcePoint, bringing a rare mix of deep adtech experience and technical leadership to build automation tools grounded in real operational pain points and proven at scale. Swivel brings orchestration to the core of ad operations, executing seller-defined logic across every workflow, platform, and channel through an agentic system that acts on intent by interpreting context, assessing live conditions, and executing decisions within defined boundaries, with each action being explainable, auditable, and governed by operator logic. The platform operationalizes monetization strategy across the stack, translating operator intent into continuous action by automating trafficking, yield management, and analytics workflows, driving incremental yield and eliminating inefficiency while turning live performance data into actionable insights that inform every monetization decision. Swivel has raised 8.8 million dollars in total funding, including a 5.8 million dollar Series A round led by Tribeca Venture Partners and Ardent Venture Partners, with participation from Motley Fool Ventures, Roster Capital, and Aperiam Ventures, along with 3 million dollars in seed funding. The company has signed publishers mostly in the connected TV space and has automated more ...Read More