As Consumers Abandon Google for ChatGPT, Peec AI Raises $21M to Help Brands Adapt

As consumers ask more and more questions about ChatGPT — not Google — product discovery is changing. And the promise to give brands visibility and control of this fast-growing search channel has been Peec AI one of Europe’s hottest startups.

Just four months later Seed round led by 20VC, the Berlin-based startup raised a $21 million Series A round led by European VC firm Singular. CEO Marius Meiners declined to disclose the valuation, but said it had tripled and was now more than $100 million.

This comes after Peec AI grew its annual recurring revenue to more than $4 million in just ten months since launching, attracting 1,300 companies and agencies to its platform.

These clients use Peec AI to track how their brands appear in AI-powered searches. But beyond visibility and ranking analytics, Peec AI also tracks sentiment — and which sources are shaping those responses.

This information is what makes Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) possible — a way for marketing teams to optimize their brand presence in AI search results, similar to how SEO works for traditional search engines. With that promise, the startup says it’s now adding about 300 customers a month, and its new funding will accelerate that growth while supporting expansion plans.

Thanks to his new round, which he also supported Deer antler, VC combination, identity.vcand S20the startup plans to hire about 40 people within the next six months. These roles are primarily based in Berlin, where Miners met his two co-founders at Antler’s Winter 2024 team: Tobias Siwonia is now Peec AI’s CTO and Daniel Drabo is its CRO.

Rapid expansion and visibility may be the key to winning in an emerging category that could soon become crowded, with competitors already including New York-based Profound and Austrian startup OtterlyAI.

To help attract more talent, the 20-person startup is currently advertising in large outdoor advertisements across the German capital. However, beyond its Berlin plans, Meiners told TechCrunch that Peec AI also plans to open a sales-focused office in New York in the second quarter of next year.

As more GEO-focused tools become available and SEO dashboards add AI tracking capabilities, Peec AI hopes to differentiate itself by offering marketing teams a dashboard that expands in scope while remaining simple to use, despite the rapidly changing nature of AI searches.

Rather than revolving around keywords like SEO tools, Peec AI’s dashboard focuses on cues that brands would like to perform well in search results. Customers can track up to 25 prompts for €75 per month (€87), increasing to 100 prompts for €169 per month (€196). Both plans offer free trials, unlike the business offering, which starts at €424 per month ($493).

To make this information credible, the dashboard also suggests actions that can improve visibility and positive sentiment. For example, its home page suggests that a company looking to answer a question about “the best CRMs for fast-growing companies” might want to “join the discussions on the r/CRM subreddit” on Reddit.

This recommendation also relates to the “source information” that is at the core of Peec AI and could guide its users’ content strategy. The startup observed that mentions in Tier 1 media did not get more exposure than articles in lesser-known publications whose titles were closer to the original question — for example, about “the best healthcare investors in Berlin.”

Companies already using its tools include Axel Springer, Chanel, n8n, ElevenLabs, TUI and more, as search AI gains ground across all sectors, both for B2C and B2B searches. However, users also turn to ChatGPT and the like for many other tasks and requests, which means the startup needs to cut down on background noise.

To achieve this, Peec AI bought raw datasets of these requests, but that’s just the beginning. “We have to filter through all of that to really get the questions people are asking about brands or markets and products and services,” Meiners said.

With all the simplicity on the outside, this proprietary data line may be the key to Peec AI’s success. This also serves as a reminder that the AI ​​value chain is not just about models and that the application layer of AI and the underlying data has become the main area for European startups, including Peec AI.