This Startup Raised 6 5M For AI Engine Optimization

The Shift from Search Engines to AI Discovery

The way people discover new products is undergoing a seismic shift. Instead of typing queries into Google, consumers are increasingly asking AI chatbots for recommendations. A recent shopping report suggests that this holiday season, Americans will lean on large language models to find gifts and deals, moving away from traditional search engines.

This trend is not a fleeting one. The same report projects that retailers could experience a staggering 520% increase in traffic from chatbots and AI prompts in 2025 compared to this year. For brands, this presents an urgent challenge: figure out how to appear in AI-generated recommendations, and do it quickly.

Introducing The Prompting Company and GEO

Enter The Prompting Company, a YC-backed startup capitalizing on this AI-driven wave. The company is built on the strategy of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), a new approach for a future where AI agents act as the primary interface between users and the internet.

The four-month-old startup, founded by the experienced team of Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline, and Albert Punama, has already raised $6.5 million in seed funding. It boasts an impressive early customer list including Rippling, Rho, Motion, and Fondo.

“Over the past year, most of the growth on websites has come from AI bots, not people,” co-founder and CEO Kevin Chandra explained. “We’re already seeing developers ask AI tools for product recommendations inside their workflows, and we think people, over time, will be less involved in parts of the purchasing funnel.” The company's core belief is that as AI becomes the first touchpoint for discovery, brands must learn to market to AI agents as effectively as they do to humans.

How Generative Engine Optimization Works

So, what does marketing to an AI look like? According to Chandra, it starts with creating an AI-facing website—a version of a site stripped of human-centric design elements like navigation bars, pop-ups, and marketing fluff. “Most businesses still design websites only for humans,” Chandra noted. “But the fastest-growing segment of users on the internet today is AI agents and they need a completely different interface.”

The Prompting Company's platform operationalizes this by first identifying and analyzing the purchase-intent questions users are asking AI models. It then helps its customers create structured content that directly answers these questions and automatically routes AI agents to these clean, AI-optimized pages.

This Y Combinator-backed startup allows companies to publish thousands of these specialized pages, ensuring LLMs can find and cite their answers. While traditional SEO is still relevant, Chandra argues that GEO is the new frontier where results are surfaced organically based on relevance, not on paid keywords or search rankings.

The Future of AI-Driven Commerce

The impact of this shift extends beyond just discovery. Emerging protocols, like Google’s Agent-to-Agent framework and OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe, signal a future where AI agents can complete purchases on a user's behalf.

“Imagine you’re a large e-commerce store. Users can buy items, make returns, compare products, or search for promotions. We help our customers expose those actions to AI agents,” said Chandra. “Right now, these agents aren’t yet clicking those options or accessing APIs directly, but we expect that to change in the coming months.” As this capability becomes widespread, the company sees a path toward conversion-driven business models.

Backed by Experience and Major Investors

Currently, The Prompting Company is focused on fintech, developer tools, and enterprise SaaS customers, and it even serves a Fortune 10 company. The platform hosts around half a million pages and drives double-digit millions in traffic to client sites each month.

The founding team members are Indonesian immigrants and serial entrepreneurs. They previously built Typedream, a YC-backed AI website builder, and Cotter, a passwordless authentication tool acquired by Stytch.

Their new venture is backed by an impressive list of investors, including Peak XV Partners, Base10, Y Combinator, and Firedrop. The $6.5 million in seed money will be used to scale the platform and its partnerships, including a collaboration with NVIDIA on next-generation AI search.

Arnav Sahu, a partner at Peak XV Partners, captured the urgency of the company's mission: “If your product isn’t discovered or cited in ChatGPT, you’re ngmi. We’re thrilled to back The Prompting Company as they build the core infrastructure for product discovery.”