Persons are more and more asking AI, not Google, to assist them uncover merchandise. A current purchasing report says People, this vacation season, will probably flip to giant language fashions this season to seek out items, offers, and gross sales as an alternative of conventional search.
Retailers may see as much as a 520% improve in visitors from chatbots and AI prompts in 2025 in comparison with 2024, in line with the report. For manufacturers, which means determining easy methods to present up in AI-generated suggestions, and quick.
This surge in AI-driven visitors is the wager behind The Prompting Firm, a YC-backed startup serving to merchandise get talked about in AI apps by means of GEO (generative engine optimization), a technique designed for a future the place AI brokers browse the web on customers’ behalf.
The four-month-old startup, based by Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline and Albert Punama, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding and already counts Rippling, Rho, Movement, Vapi, Fondo, Kernel, and Traceloop as prospects.
“Over the previous yr, many of the progress on web sites has come from AI bots, not folks,” co-founder and CEO Chandra informed TechCrunch in an interview. “We’re already seeing builders ask AI instruments for product suggestions inside their workflows, and we expect folks, over time, can be much less concerned in components of the buying funnel.”
As AI turns into the primary touchpoint for product discovery and brokers finally transact on a consumer’s behalf, The Prompting Firm believes manufacturers should discover ways to market to brokers in addition to people.
What which means, in line with Chandra, is that manufacturers will want an AI-facing web site, a model of their website made for brokers with out navigation bars, pop-ups, or advertising and marketing fluff. “Most companies nonetheless design web sites just for people,” Chandra informed TechCrunch. “However the fastest-growing phase of customers on the web at the moment is AI brokers they usually want a totally totally different interface.”
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Right here’s how the platform works: First, it identifies and analyzes the questions AI brokers are asking by probing fashions to uncover particular purchase-intent queries. It then creates structured content material that solutions these questions and routinely routes AI brokers to “AI-optimized pages.”
The Y Combinator-backed startup helps corporations publish 1000’s of AI-friendly pages so LLMs can cite their solutions even once they don’t rank in conventional search engine optimisation. (YC has backed related startups, together with Relixir, Writesonic, and Bear.)
Whereas search engine optimisation nonetheless issues, Chandra argues that GEO is shortly turning into the precedence for manufacturers. In GEO, product outcomes floor organically primarily based on relevance to the dialog, not paid key phrases or search rankings.
This shift may change how folks purchase merchandise. Rising protocols, together with Google’s Agent-to-Agent framework and OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe, may additional speed up adoption by permitting AI brokers to browse and full purchases on behalf of customers, shifting them from discovery to transaction.
“Think about you’re a big e-commerce retailer. Customers can purchase gadgets, make returns, examine merchandise, or seek for promotions. We assist our prospects expose these actions to AI brokers. Proper now, these brokers aren’t but clicking these choices or accessing APIs straight, however we anticipate that to vary within the coming months,” stated Chandra. “As soon as that turns into widespread and attribution improves, we see a path towards extra advertising- or conversion-driven fashions. For now, we’re centered on serving to corporations get found and really useful by AI.”
Up to now, The Prompting Firm serves largely fintech, developer instruments, and enterprise SaaS prospects. The staff says a Fortune 10 firm can also be utilizing its product, for which it at the moment hosts about half one million pages.
Total, visitors pushed to consumer websites is within the double-digit tens of millions monthly. The Prompting Firm makes use of a subscription mannequin, charging prospects primarily based on the variety of prompts tracked and pages hosted.
The corporate’s founders, Indonesian immigrants who met as freshmen, beforehand constructed YC-backed Typedream (YC W20), a startup that allowed customers to construct and launch web sites in minutes with AI, earlier than Lovable and newer entrants took off (beehiiv acquired Typedream final June). The founders additionally constructed Cotter, a passwordless authentication SDK that was acquired by Stytch.
With The Prompting Firm, they’re attempting to vary how folks uncover and buy merchandise within the AI period. The seed cash, raised from Peak XV Companions, Base10, Y Combinator, Firedrop, and angels, together with Logan Kilpatrick, will assist the corporate scale its platform and partnerships as AI-powered discovery turns into the brand new distribution channel. The startup can also be collaborating with NVIDIA on next-generation AI search.
“In case your product isn’t found or cited in ChatGPT, you’re ngmi,” stated Arnav Sahu, companion at Peak XV Companions. “We’re thrilled to again The Prompting Firm as they construct the core infrastructure for product discovery—already powering Fortune 10 corporations and fast-growing startups. Kevin, Michelle, and Albert are repeat YC founders, and they’re superior.”
