# Subsets **Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/subsets **Vertical:** Entertainment **Subcategory:** General **Tier:** Emerging **Website:** subsets.com **Last Updated:** 2026-04-14 ## Summary Copenhagen YC S23 AI retention automation for subscription media serving NY Times Athletic and Børsen; $1.65M Upfin pre-seed Feb 2024 with explainable AI experiments competing with Chargebee for churn reduction in digital publishing and streaming. ## Company Overview Subsets is a Copenhagen, Denmark-based AI retention automation company — backed by Y Combinator (S23) with $1.65 million in pre-seed funding in February 2024 led by Upfin with participation from YC, Cuesta Labs, Sandhill Markets, and Phillip Chambers — providing subscription media companies, digital publishers, and streaming platforms with an AI-driven churn reduction platform that automatically designs, deploys, and evaluates retention experiments to identify which personalized interventions reduce subscriber cancellations at scale. Founded in 2023 by Oliver Brandt, Martin Johnsen, and Nikolai Skelbo, Subsets operates with a 7-person team and serves notable subscription media customers including The Athletic (The New York Times subsidiary), and Børsen (Danish financial newspaper). Subsets' AI retention platform addresses the operational challenge that subscription businesses face when trying to reduce churn through personalized retention interventions: most subscription companies have retention programs (win-back discounts, pause options, content recommendations for disengaged subscribers) but lack the experimentation infrastructure to systematically test which interventions work best for which subscriber segments. Subsets automates the full retention experimentation lifecycle — identifying subscribers showing cancellation signals (declining engagement metrics, specific usage patterns that precede cancellation), generating hypotheses for the most effective retention intervention for each subscriber profile, deploying personalized retention offers or content recommendations, and measuring the causal impact of each intervention through rigorous A/B testing. The explainable AI component (providing retention managers with interpretable explanations of why the AI recommended each intervention and which subscriber attributes the model used) builds the trust required for human retention teams to deploy AI-generated intervention recommendations at scale. In 2025, Subsets competes in the subscription retention, churn prediction, and customer lifecycle management market with Chargebee (subscription management, $470M raised at $3.5B valuation), Recurly (subscription billing with churn management, $19M raised), and Vindicia (subscription management for media, Amdocs subsidiary) for digital media and subscription company retention automation adoption. The subscription media market (newspapers, streaming services, digital magazines, newsletters) has the most concentrated and measurable churn problem of any subscription business category — subscriber churn is tracked by every media executive, and the difference between 5% and 3% monthly churn dramatically affects LTV and business model sustainability. The Athletic (New York Times) and Børsen's deployments provide enterprise media credibility for Subsets' AI retention approach. Y Combinator S23 backing connects Subsets with the media technology investor community. The 2025 strategy focuses on scaling the subscription media customer base across European and US publishers, building the telecom subscriber retention application (mobile carrier churn being a large-scale version of the same retention challenge), and expanding the revenue optimization features beyond cancellation prevention to upgrade and price sensitivity interventions. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Subsets? Subsets is a Copenhagen-based AI retention company founded in 2023 that builds AI-driven retention automation for subscription media businesses. The company helps digital publishers, streaming platforms, and subscription services reduce churn through automated retention experiments and explainable AI. ### What products and services does Subsets offer? Subsets offers AI retention automation that functions as an AI co-pilot for subscription businesses. Their platform delivers automated retention experiments, explainable AI capabilities, and churn reduction solutions specifically designed for subscription media companies. ### Who are Subsets' target customers? Subsets targets subscription businesses including digital publishers, streaming platforms, subscription apps, and telecoms. Current customers include major media organizations such as The New York Times, The Athletic, and Børsen. ### When was Subsets founded? Subsets was founded in 2023 by Oliver Brandt, Martin Johnsen, and Nikolai Skelbo. The company participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2023 batch. ### Where is Subsets located? Subsets is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. ### What funding has Subsets raised? Subsets raised $1.65M in pre-seed funding in February 2024. The round was led by Upfin, with participation from Y Combinator, Cuesta Labs, Sandhill Markets, and Phillip Chambers. ### How many employees does Subsets have? Subsets currently has 7 employees. ### What technology approach does Subsets use? Subsets uses explainable AI to power their retention automation platform. Their approach focuses on conducting automated retention experiments that enable churn reduction for subscription-based businesses. ### Who are some of Subsets' notable customers? Subsets serves major media organizations including The New York Times, The Athletic, and Børsen (a Danish business publication). ### What are Subsets' recent developments? In February 2024, Subsets raised $1.65M in pre-seed funding led by Upfin with participation from Y Combinator, Cuesta Labs, Sandhill Markets, and Phillip Chambers. The company continues to expand its AI retention automation platform for subscription media businesses. ## Tags ai-powered, analytics, b2b, b2c, media, saas, startup, gaming --- *Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*