Applecart Announces a $100M Series C Funding by Blackstone Growth
New York, NY – January 28, 2026 – Applecart, the leading marketing technology company that C-suites use to reach important business stakeholders, today announced a $100 million minority investment from funds managed by Blackstone through its Growth Equity business, Blackstone Growth (“Blackstone”).
Founded in 2013 by Matt Kalmans and Sacha Samotin while undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, Applecart’s platform is now used by leaders of many of the country’s largest enterprises spanning Fortune 100 companies, major advertising and communications agencies, and leading nonprofits and trade associations. Built by an elite team of engineers, data scientists and strategists, the platform enables companies to reach their most important business stakeholders with messaging and provides robust measurement and reporting tools to help optimize impact over time. In a time of significant media fragmentation, social media and AI contributing to an exponentially higher volume of content generation, and a pitched battle for attention, Applecart’s platform has become a vital asset to C-suites navigating today’s information environment. Applecart’s platform is utilized by senior executives in high impact initiatives spanning brand and b2b marketing, communications, investor relations, and public affairs.
Vishal Amin, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, said: “Matt, Sacha, and the Applecart team have built a market leading technology platform that has become a trusted partner to senior executives at many of the world’s largest businesses and organizations. The strong feedback we received from Applecart’s clients about the critical role their platform plays in how companies address their most important business priorities was a key driver of our conviction behind this investment. We are thrilled to partner with the company to fuel its continued growth at scale.”
Matt Kalmans and Sacha Samotin, Co-CEOs and Co-Founders of Applecart shared: “We are incredibly proud to be partnering with Blackstone in this next chapter. Blackstone’s vote of confidence in our product and our team is meaningful to us both because they are the gold standard in private investing and because they are partners to so many other leading technology companies that we admire from OpenAI to Snowflake.”
In connection with this transaction, Blackstone and HELLER Founder and CEO Risa Heller will join existing board members Kalmans, Samotin, and TKO Group Executive Chairman and CEO and WME Group Executive Chairman Ariel Emanuel on the company’s board.
Emanuel led Applecart’s Series A in 2018 as CEO of what was then called Endeavor, and he will remain on the company’s board following the transaction with Blackstone.
“When I first joined Applecart’s board, they had less than 50 employees and not a single enterprise customer. Today, Applecart is an essential strategic platform for the world’s most sophisticated companies and CEOs. I am proud to partner with Sacha, Matt, and now Blackstone to continue growing this one-of-a-kind company,” said Emanuel.
To learn more about Applecart, please visit www.applecart.co.
Canaccord Genuity served as financial advisor and Cozen O’Connor as legal counsel to Applecart. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP served as legal counsel to Blackstone.
About Applecart
Applecart is a high-growth marketing technology company based in New York City, founded by Matt Kalmans and Sacha Samotin in 2013. Applecart’s platform supports major corporations, national nonprofit organizations, and trade associations with their most important marketing and communications priorities by helping them more effectively reach key stakeholder audiences, including business leaders, policymakers, investors and media. Applecart is backed by investors including global sports, entertainment and marketing giant Endeavor, KKR Co-Chairman and Co-CEO Henry Kravis, Bain Consulting’s Future Back Ventures, entrepreneur Chris Burch, a founder of Palantir, Owl Capital, senior engineering leaders at Twitter and Yelp, past CEOs of Fortune 50 companies, and a number of leading venture capitalists.
About Blackstone
Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. Blackstone seeks to deliver compelling returns for institutional and individual investors by strengthening the companies in which the firm invests. Blackstone’s over $1.2 trillion in assets under management include global investment strategies focused on real estate, private equity, credit, infrastructure, life sciences, growth equity, secondaries and hedge funds. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow @blackstone on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram.
Media Contacts
Blackstone
Hallie Dewey
Hallie.Dewey@Blackstone.com
Jennifer Heath
Jennifer.Heath@Blackstone.com
Applecart
Applecart Communications
press@applecart.co
