Who is building the next layer

End-to-end AI search optimization platform

Promptwatch is an Amsterdam AI search optimization platform launched in April 2025 that monitors and improves brand presence in AI answers. It raised a EUR 6 million seed round led by Seed + Speed Ventures in July 2026 after a EUR 1.2 million pre-seed; fundingTotalUsd is left null because the amounts were reported in euros.

Corpus engineering for brand representation inside AI models

geoSurge targets how models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude internally learn and represent a brand over time rather than only tracking citations. It raised a $12M seed led by AlbionVC, described at the time as the largest seed round in the GEO category.

Search engine and API built for AI agents

Exa builds a web search index and API designed for LLMs and agents rather than human browsing, plus Websets for high-compute research queries. It raised an $85M Series B led by Benchmark in September 2025 and a $250M Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz in May 2026 at a $2.2B valuation.

Agentic marketing platform for enterprise brands in AI channels

Bluefish processes AI prompts and responses across ChatGPT, Google AI, Claude, Perplexity and Amazon Rufus to show enterprises how their products are portrayed, and turns that into marketing actions. It raised a $20M Series A led by NEA in August 2025 and a $43M Series B co-led by Threshold Ventures and NEA in April 2026.

AI agents plus human practitioners for search growth

Daydream is a San Francisco agency that pairs proprietary SEO and AEO agents with human strategists to run search programmes for clients. It raised a $15M Series A led by WndrCo in April 2026, bringing total funding to $21M. Not related to the fashion shopping agent of the same name.

AI search visibility platform

Cognizo is an AI search visibility platform founded by a team of LLM researchers and marketing operators. Secondary sources report a $1.8M pre-seed round in March 2026.

Answer engine optimization and AI visibility platform for enterprises

Profound measures how brands are mentioned, described and cited by AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, and sells optimization and agent-analytics products on top of that data. It raised a $96M Series C at a reported $1B valuation in February 2026.

Brand visibility and influence platform for generative AI surfaces

Brandlight tracks and attempts to influence how brands are represented inside generative AI platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Founded in Israel in late 2024, it raised a $5.75M seed in April 2025 and a $30M Series A led by Pelion Venture Partners in February 2026.

AI search optimization for retail and marketplace listings

Azoma builds AI visibility and content optimization tools aimed at commerce, covering marketplace assistants such as Amazon Rufus and Walmart Sparky alongside general LLMs, including a digital twin that simulates how chatbots describe a brand. It raised a $4M pre-Series A in December 2025.

Agentic AI search and workspace

Genspark builds an agentic search product and AI workspace, founded by former Bing and Google AI leaders. It raised a $275M Series B in November 2025 at a $1.25B post-money valuation, and secondary sources report a later extension at a higher valuation.

AI search analytics for marketing teams and agencies

Peec AI is a Berlin-based platform that tracks and benchmarks brand visibility across AI answer engines. It was founded at Antler in early 2025, raised a seed round led by 20VC in July 2025 and a $21M Series A led by Singular in November 2025, and reported passing $10M ARR in May 2026.

Content engineering platform for AI search

AirOps lets marketing teams build and run AI content workflows at scale and publish directly into CMS platforms, positioning itself as content engineering for AI search. It raised a $40M Series B led by Greylock in November 2025 at a reported $225M valuation, bringing total funding to about $60M.

AI search inbound engine with autonomous content agents

Relixir is a Y Combinator X25 company that helps B2B brands generate leads from AI search, pairing visibility tracking with a CMS and agents that generate and refresh content optimized for LLM citations. It announced an oversubscribed $2M seed round in November 2025.

Attribution and revenue sharing for AI answers

ProRata.ai, founded by Bill Gross, builds attribution technology that apportions AI-generated answers back to source publishers and splits resulting revenue, and operates the Gist answer engine and Gist Answers on-site search for publishers. It closed a $40M Series B led by Touring Capital in September 2025, bringing total funding above $75M.

Crawl and scrape API that turns websites into LLM-ready data

Firecrawl provides crawling, scraping and extraction APIs that convert web pages into structured, LLM-ready content, widely used in agent and RAG pipelines. It announced a Series A in August 2025; the amount and investors were not stated in the announcement reviewed.

Measuring how AI models describe and recommend brands

Evertune runs large prompt panels against major language models to measure how a brand is described, ranked and recommended, and reports on changes over time. Founded by early employees of The Trade Desk and led by CEO Brian Stempeck, it raised a $15M Series A led by Felicis in August 2025.

Search API for LLM agents

Tavily provides an API-first search engine that returns pre-scraped, pre-ranked text chunks with citations for AI agents. It raised a $5M seed in July 2024 and a $20M Series A led by Insight Partners and Alpha Wave Global in August 2025, and was acquired by Nebius Group for a reported $275M in February 2026.

Making websites readable and measurable for AI agents

Scrunch AI helps brands understand how AI agents and answer engines read their websites, using persona-based prompt testing and agent-facing content delivery. It raised a $15M Series A led by Decibel in July 2025, bringing total funding to $19M.

Generative engine optimization platform built by ex-Google Search engineers

AthenaHQ tracks brand visibility and citations across eight or more AI models and recommends content changes to improve placement. Founded by former Google Search and DeepMind engineers, it came out of stealth in 2025 with a $2.2M seed round backed by Y Combinator.

Persona-based AI search visibility monitoring

Gumshoe is a Seattle startup that measures how brands appear in AI assistants using persona-based prompt simulation. It raised a $2M pre-seed led by Pioneer Square Labs with Hawke Ventures and angels from Google, LinkedIn, Meta and X.

AI search tracking with source-level attribution

Airefs is an AI search visibility tool launched in 2025 that tracks brand mentions and citations across AI engines with source-level attribution. No funding has been publicly disclosed.

AI visibility monitoring including paid AI placements

LLM Pulse is a bootstrapped European AI visibility tool launched in July 2025 that tracks brand appearances in AI answers and also monitors paid advertising inside AI surfaces.

AI search optimization platform

Omnibound is a Dallas-based AI search optimization platform founded in 2025. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

Nonprofit collective licensing body behind the RSL standard

The RSL Collective is a nonprofit collective rights organization launched in September 2025 alongside Really Simple Licensing (RSL), an open standard that extends robots.txt with machine-readable licensing terms including pay-per-crawl and pay-per-inference. It is not venture funded.

AI search visibility and optimization

The Prompting Company was founded in 2025 by the founders of Typedream and Cotter to help brands appear in AI assistant answers. Secondary sources report a $6.5M seed round.

AI visibility tracking with GA4 revenue attribution

Trakkr is a London-built AI visibility platform that tracks brand ranking across eight AI models, analyses cited sources, benchmarks competitors and connects to Google Analytics to measure AI referral revenue. It also sells a white-label tier for agencies.

Per-request marketplace for AI access to publisher content

TollBit lets publishers detect AI bot traffic and charge AI applications per request for access to their content, and reports on AI crawler and referral activity. It raised roughly $7M in seed funding in March 2024 and a $24M Series A led by Lightspeed in October 2024.

Conversational AI search and discovery for fashion commerce

Daydream is a chat-based shopping agent for fashion founded by former Stitch Fix COO Julie Bornstein, competing with traditional product search and discovery. It raised a $50M seed round in 2024 and launched in public beta in June 2025. Not related to the AI-native SEO agency of the same name.

Marketplace for licensed AI training data

Human Native runs a marketplace connecting rights holders with AI developers for licensed training data. It announced a seed round of GBP 2.8 million led by LocalGlobe and Mercuri in June 2024; fundingTotalUsd is left null because the round was reported in pounds sterling.

AI visibility tracking and content engine, YC S24

Gauge is a Y Combinator S24 company offering AI visibility tracking with a built-in content engine, and also operates ProductRank.ai. Secondary sources report a $500K seed round and a subsequent acquisition by XBE; the acquisition has not been confirmed against a primary source.

Native advertising inside AI chat applications

Nexad builds a native advertising layer for AI chat assistants and answer engines, an adjacent monetization model to organic AI visibility. Aggregated sources report a $6M seed round.

Data licensing platform for AI developers

Protege connects data owners, including publishers and content businesses, with AI developers seeking licensed training data. Aggregated sources report a $10M seed round.

French AI search visibility platform

Qwairy is a French platform for monitoring brand visibility in generative AI answers. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI search visibility tracking across 17+ engines

Rankscale (Rankscale GmbH) tracks brand visibility, citations and competitor share across more than 17 AI engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Grok and DeepSeek, and runs GEO site audits. It is bootstrapped.

AI bot analytics and content monetization for publishers

ScalePost helps publishers and brands classify AI bot traffic at the URL and edge-log level, measure how their content is cited in AI answers, and broker licensing and revenue-share deals with AI companies. Aggregators report roughly $1.1M raised.

Synthetic news data and royalty distribution for publishers

AskNews supplies structured and synthetic news data to AI developers while routing royalties back to source publishers. Its pre-seed funding amount is undisclosed.

Real-time content APIs and monetization for publishers

Dappier packages publisher content into real-time retrieval APIs that AI applications can license and pay for, plus on-site AI answer widgets. Aggregated sources report a $2M seed round.

AI visibility measurement tied to brand tracking

Hall (Hall Technologies Pty. Ltd.) measured how language models describe and represent brands, positioning AI visibility as a brand rather than a search metric. Backed by Blackbird Ventures with a reported $2M pre-seed, it was acquired by brand tracking company Tracksuit in 2026 and its capabilities folded into the Tracksuit platform.

AI news aggregation with multi-source summarization

Particle is an AI news reader that clusters and summarizes coverage across sources with attribution, relevant to how AI intermediaries surface publisher content. Aggregated sources report a $10.9M Series A.

Ad-free generative answer engine

Andi is a small independent generative search engine that returns conversational answers with sources and no advertising. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI search visibility and optimization platform

Goodie is a New York answer engine optimization platform combining prompt testing across major LLMs with an optimization hub, agentic commerce features and sentiment tracking. Public company databases list no disclosed venture rounds.

AI answer engine

Perplexity operates a conversational answer engine with cited sources, a Comet browser and publisher revenue-sharing programmes, and is one of the largest referrers of AI-driven traffic to publishers. Aggregators report total funding of roughly $1.7B across eleven rounds, with a September 2025 round of $200M at a $20B valuation.

AI answer engine for developers

Phind is a Y Combinator-backed answer engine focused on technical and programming questions, returning cited answers rather than link lists. Funding details were not verified against a primary source.

Independent search index and search API

Brave Search, part of Brave Software, runs its own web index and sells a Search API that is used as a source by several AI answer engines and metasearch products. Brave Software is privately held and its search unit is not separately funded.

Generative AI platform for multilingual content production

Contents.com is an Italian generative AI platform for producing multilingual marketing and editorial content at scale. Aggregated sources report a $25M Series B.

AI content platform for marketing teams

Jasper is an AI content generation platform for marketing copy and blog content that has since expanded into brand voice controls and AI marketing workflows. It raised a $125M Series A in 2022.

AI search and agent platform for enterprises

You.com operates an AI search product and a web-search API for enterprises and AI developers, founded by former Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher. Funding details were not verified against a primary source.

Global anonymized clickstream data provider

Datos licenses anonymized desktop and mobile clickstream datasets used for competitive intelligence, consumer behaviour research and search analytics. Semrush acquired a majority stake in December 2023 and began integrating the data into its products in 2024; terms were not disclosed.

Ad-free, subscription-funded search engine

Kagi is a subscription search engine with no advertising, combining its own Teclis index with results from Google, Brave Search, Mojeek and Yandex, plus an AI assistant and the Orion browser. Aggregators report roughly $7M raised.

SEO and marketing visibility platform acquired by Adobe

Semrush is a long-established SEO, competitive intelligence and AI visibility platform that acquired clickstream provider Datos in 2023. Adobe agreed in November 2025 to acquire Semrush in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $1.9B at $12 per share; the deal closed in 2026. Included as a market-map acquisition rather than as a recent startup.

AI content and search visibility platform, Singapore

Addlly AI is a Singapore-based AI content generation and search visibility platform. Secondary sources report a seed round of SGD 1.2 million; fundingTotalUsd is left null because the amount was reported in Singapore dollars.

German AI search visibility product

Atomic AGI is a German AI search visibility product built by the company Omnius. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI article writer for SEO at scale

Byword is a London AI content platform for programmatic and large-scale SEO publishing, covering research, generation, optimization and CMS publishing. No venture funding has been publicly disclosed.

AI visibility platform

Emberos is an AI search visibility platform. Secondary sources report a $1.2M pre-seed round from a single undisclosed angel investor.

Freemium AI search visibility monitoring

Geneo is a freemium AI search visibility monitoring tool tracking brand mentions and citations across AI answer engines. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

Free-tier AI search visibility toolkit

Geoptie provides AI search visibility monitoring and a set of free GEO audit utilities. It was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2025 according to secondary listings. No funding has been publicly disclosed.

AI-assisted SEO, content and AEO growth agency

Graphite is a growth agency that runs SEO, content and answer engine optimization programmes for technology companies, and has launched its own AI-driven topical SEO platform. Funding is not publicly disclosed. Distinct from the code review company of the same name.

AI search visibility monitoring across seven answer engines

Knowatoa captures generated answers from seven AI engines to track brand mentions, citations and sentiment, identify content gaps against competitors and draft targeted content. It was built by two B2B SaaS marketing operators and has no disclosed venture funding.

SERP-aware AI writer for publishers and SEO teams

Koala (KoalaWriter) generates long-form articles using live SERP data, with internal linking, image generation and direct publishing workflows. It is an independent, bootstrapped product with no disclosed funding.

AI answer engine and research assistant

Liner is a South Korean AI search and research assistant that grew out of a web highlighting tool. Aggregators report roughly $33M raised across eight rounds.

AI search rank tracking with a free tier

LLMrefs tracks brand and keyword visibility across AI answer engines and includes an AI crawlability checker on its free plan. No funding has been publicly disclosed.

Nordic AI search visibility platform

Nimt.ai is a Swedish AI visibility platform for tracking brand presence in AI answers. Secondary sources report a EUR 360K pre-seed round; fundingTotalUsd is left null because the amount was reported in euros.

AI search monitoring for brands and agencies

Otterly.AI monitors brand mentions, links and sentiment in AI search results and AI Overviews. Public sources describe it as bootstrapped; reported founding year and headquarters differ between sources, so both are left unset.

AI-driven enterprise SEO and content optimization

Quattr is an enterprise search growth platform that combines crawl, content and Search Console/GA4 data with AI recommendations, and has added AI search visibility reporting. Secondary sources report over $7M in disclosed funding.

Content optimization with AI visibility reporting

Rankability is a content optimization tool that has added AI search visibility reporting for agencies. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

Czech AI search visibility startup

Ranketta is a Czech AI visibility startup founded by a team with a background in the Mikolov research group. Secondary sources report a EUR 1 million pre-seed round; fundingTotalUsd is left null because the amount was reported in euros.

AI writing and SEO assistant

SEO.ai is a Danish AI writing and optimization tool for search and, more recently, AI answer engines. The company is registered in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. No venture funding has been publicly disclosed.

Budget AI search visibility tracker, formerly GPTrends

Siteline is a low-cost AI search visibility tracker previously marketed as GPTrends. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI content monetization for publishers

Sphere.ai is one of the AI revenue platforms that lets publishers charge AI companies for content access, charging AI firms a transaction fee while publishers retain the licensing revenue. Funding has not been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

Finnish AI search visibility platform

Superlines is a Finnish AI visibility platform, listed as a participant in the Google for AI Startups programme. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI brand alignment built on interpretability research

Unusual audits how AI models perceive a brand and builds content and strategy intended to influence AI purchasing recommendations, drawing on AI interpretability research. Secondary sources report a $3.6M seed round led by BoxGroup with Y Combinator participation.

Entity-based AI search visibility checker

Waikay is a low-cost AI visibility tool that checks how AI engines answer questions about a brand or entity. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI content platform with GEO tracking

Writesonic is a Y Combinator-backed AI writing platform that has added AI search visibility and GEO tracking features to its content suite. Funding amounts are not disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI answer engine visibility analytics

XFunnel is an AI search visibility tool that tracks how brands surface in answer engines. No funding has been publicly disclosed in the sources reviewed.

AI search monitoring and content optimization

ZipTie tracks brand visibility across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity in 28 countries, generates test queries automatically and recommends content changes. No venture funding has been disclosed.