• "AEO" is replacing "SEO" as AI chatbots such as Sam Altman's ChatGPT change online discovery.
• AEO focuses on influencing AI chatbot responses. It's different from traditional keyword-driven SEO.
• AEO startups are rapidly emerging, raising venture capital, and analyzing growing AI-driven traffic.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the art and science of crafting websites and other online content so it shows up prominently when people Google something.

A massive industry of experts, advisors, gurus (and charlatans) has grown up around the interplay between Google, which purposely sets opaque rules, and website owners tweaking stuff and trying to work the system.

The rise of generative AI, large language models, and AI chatbots is changing all this — radically and quickly.

While SEO has long been a cornerstone of digital marketing strategy, a new paradigm is rapidly threatening to take its place: "answer engine optimization," or AEO.

As AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity become the front door to online discovery, AEO is emerging as a strategic imperative for growth. There's been an explosion of AEO startups and tools in recent months, all promising to help online businesses show up when chatbots and AI models answer user questions.

"There must have been 30 AEO product launches in the last few months, all trying to do what SEO did 20 years ago," said David Slater, a chief marketing officer who's worked at Mozilla, Salesforce, and other tech companies. "It's absolutely going to be a hot space."

What Is AEO?

AEO is SEO adapted for the world of conversational AI, says Ethan Smith, CEO of digital marketing firm Graphite Growth. He wrote an excellent blog recently about this new trend.

Where traditional SEO focused on optimizing for static keyword-driven queries, AEO centers on influencing how AI chatbots respond to user questions, he says. With tools like ChatGPT increasingly integrating real-time web search and surfacing clickable links, chat interfaces now function like hybrid search engines. The result is a fast feedback loop that makes influencing LLM outputs not just possible, but essential for online businesses.

Unlike SEO, where a landing page might target a single keyword, AEO pages must address clusters of related questions. Smith shares an example: Instead of optimizing a webpage for "project management software," AEO pages might answer dozens or even hundreds of variations such as "What's the best project management tool for remote teams?" or "Which project management platforms support API integration?"

Why ChatGPT's live web access makes AEO important

This shift didn't happen overnight. When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, its responses were generated from outdated training data with no live web access. But over the past year, LLMs have started using retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, and other techniques that help them incorporate more real-time information. They often perform a live online search, for instance, and then summarize results in real time. This makes AEO both faster to influence and more dynamic than its SEO predecessor, Smith writes.

There's been some interest in AEO for about a year or so. But in early 2025, OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI services began surfacing prominent links and citations in answers a lot more. That's when AEO really took off.

Now, AEO startups are raising venture capital, some online businesses are seeing conversion spikes from AI traffic, and there's been a Cambrian explosion of AEO analytics, tracking, and content tools.

Check out this list of AEO startups and tools, identified by Smith from Graphite Growth. There are a few established players in here, too, including HubSpot. (Overall, there are a lot, so click on the button in the top right of this table to see all the options!)

Looking into the 'brain' of an AI model

There's already a race to try to determine how these AI chatbots spit out results and recommendations, so website owners can hack their way to better online distribution in the new era of generative AI and large language models.

GPTrends is one of these up-and-coming AEO providers. David Kaufman, one of the entrepreneurs behind the firm, shared an interesting analysis recently on LinkedIn.

He said that AI search results from tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity are unpredictable. They can change even when you ask the same question multiple times. Unlike Google, where search results stay mostly the same, AI tools give different answers depending on how the model responds in the moment, Kaufman writes.

For example, Kaufman and his colleagues asked ChatGPT this question 100 times: "What's the best support ticketing software?" Then they tracked which providers appeared most often. Here are the results of the test:

Zendesk showed up in 94% of answers, while other companies, including Freshworks and Zoho, appeared less often and in different positions. This randomness gives less well-known brands a better shot at being seen, at least some of the time.

"Strategically, this means brands need to rethink how they optimize for discovery, focusing less on traditional SEO tactics and more on comprehensive, authoritative content that AI systems recognize as valuable," Kaufman writes.

• Gold House's Gold Gala honored Asian Pacific leaders in Los Angeles on Saturday.
• The event had all the classic Hollywood trappings, including star-studded presenters and honorees.
• But AI and Silicon Valley loomed large on the night.

On the surface, the Gold Gala put on by Gold House to honor Asian Pacific leaders buzzed with all the classic Hollywood glitz and glamour.

Hosted in Los Angeles at the Music Center's Jerry Moss Plaza, hundreds of black-tie-clad guests walked the gold carpet, sipped signature cocktails, and chowed down on Filipino food from James Beard Award-winning chef Lord Maynard Llera as they gathered in 90-degree heat on Saturday.

An impressive showing of A-list talent presented and performed, and honorees included groundbreaking directors Jon M. Chu and Ang Lee, and musicians Laufey, Anderson.Paak, and Megan Thee Stallion.

Gold House, which describes itself as "a cultural ecosystem that unites, invests in, and champions Asian Pacific leaders," used the event to recognize the organization's A100, its 100 most impactful Asian Pacific leaders in culture and society over the last year — including Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng — and its top A1 honorees, deemed to have had the most impact within their respective industries over the same period.

Despite the spotlight on the entertainment industry, the arrival of artificial intelligence — and the influence of Silicon Valley — was notable throughout the night.

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO and cofounder of Perplexity AI, an AI-based search engine that wants to put Google on its heels, received the A1 Business & Technology Award and joked about being famous in Silicon Valley. Elsewhere, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, OpenAI's Mark Chen, and Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao's names and images appeared on a screen flashing the list of the A100 honorees.

Gold House CEO and Executive Chairman Bing Chen also quipped about using ChatGPT to write a poem he read at the start of the dinner ceremony, and guests at at least one table discussed guardrails for kids using AI.

It was a potent reminder of how quickly the technology has become a part of the cultural lexicon and of the tension between human creativity versus the machine.

Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, an A1 honoree, acknowledged that "the world is changing now as we move from the age of influence to the age of intelligence, and AI is going to make groundbreaking changes in many sectors."

However, Mukherjee warned that AI may face a tougher time breaking into the entertainment industry.

"AI is going to die a very quick and painful death because people will understand the importance of humanity," he said.

Apple executive Eddie Cue said that Apple is "actively looking at" shifting the focus of mobile Safari's search experience to AI search engines, potentially challenging Google's longstanding search dominance and the two companies' lucrative default search engine deal. The statements were made while Cue testified for the US Department of Justice in the Alphabet/Google antitrust trial, as first reported in Bloomberg.

Cue noted that searches in Safari fell for the first time ever last year and attributed the shift to users increasingly using large language model-based solutions to perform their searches.

"Prior to AI, my feeling around this was, none of the others were valid choices," Cue said of the deal Apple had with Google, which is a key component in the DOJ's case against Alphabet. He added: "I think today there is much greater potential because there are new entrants attacking the problem in a different way."

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• Google has been worrying about losing search share to AI engines like ChatGPT for a couple of years.
• It looks like that's started to happen, an Apple executive testified in court.
• Google shares immediately fell.

Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, investors have wondered about the implications for Google. Mainly: What happens to the company if lots of people start using AI engines to answer questions instead of Google's dominant search engine?

Now it looks like that might actually be happening.

Eddy Cue, an Apple executive, said searches on Apple's Safari browser shrank for the first time ever in April — a change he chalked up to people using AI instead.

Cue made that disclosure on Wednesday while testifying in the federal antitrust suit against Google's parent company, Alphabet, because Apple receives more than $20 billion a year from Google to make it the default search engine on Apple devices.

He also said Apple would likely add AI engines as search alternatives on its devices over time, Bloomberg reports:

[Cue] noted that searches on Safari dipped for the first time last month, which he attributed to people using AI.

Cue said he believes that AI search providers, including OpenAI, Perplexity AI Inc. and Anthropic PBC, will eventually replace standard search engines like Google. He said he believes Apple will add those players as options in Safari in the future.

"We will add them to the list — they probably won't be the default," he said, adding that they still need to improve.

Cue's testimony neatly explains a major reason that investors have been pouring money into AI companies like OpenAI at increasingly huge valuations: They're hoping that at a minimum, they'll be able to carve out some of Google's ownership of the stock market — the primary reason Google is worth $2 trillion today.

That prospect is also what has prompted Google to turn itself into an AI company, by turning conventional searches into queries it answers with its Gemini AI engine. Early stumbles in those efforts generated a lot of mockery — see glue pizza — but Google has stuck with it, insisting that users like the results.

On the company's earnings call last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said its efforts were working and that its AI engine had helped increase search volume: "Nearly a year after we launched AI Overviews in the US, we continue to see that usage growth is increasing as people learn that Search is more useful for more of their queries," he told analysts.

Cue's testimony suggests that those efforts haven't been enough to protect Google's market. Google shares fell more than 7% on Wednesday.

Google released a statement late Wednesday disputing Cue's assertion and saying it continues to see "overall query growth in search."

"That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms," the statement said.

• Perplexity's CEO said breaking up Google is a mistake — the real issue is Android's default services.
• The DOJ wants to break up Google after ruling that it has a monopoly in search.
• Perplexity, an AI search rival, says "more consumer choice" on Android is the fix.

Perplexity may be taking on Google in search, but its CEO doesn't want the tech giant to be broken up as part of the DOJ's landmark antitrust case.

Aravind Srinivas said in an X post Monday that his company has been asked to testify in the remedy phase of the DOJ's case, which comes after a judge ruled in August that Google had violated antitrust rules to maintain a monopoly in search.

Srinivas said he intends to testify that "Chrome should remain within and continue to be run by Google," but that Android should become "more open to consumer choice."

He said Perplexity's own upcoming browser, Comet, is built on Chromium — the open-source framework Google created.

"We don't believe anyone else can run a browser at that scale without a hit on quality, nor the business model to be able to serve that many users profitably by keeping the browser free," Srinivas wrote.

However, in the same posts, he took issue with Android, the open-source operating system owned by Google.

Srinivas said phone makers are forced to use a Google-approved version of Android to access apps like the Play Store and Maps, which means setting Google services as defaults.

That limits consumer choice, he said, and blocks alternatives like Perplexity's AI assistant. Perplexity, founded in 2022, fields over 100 million search queries each week, Srinivas said in October.

Google has paid billions, including $20 billion to Apple, to be the default search provider on smartphones, according to court documents.

"The remedy that is right in our opinion," Srinivas continued on X, "is not a breakup of Google, but rather offering consumers the choice to pick their defaults on Android without feeling the risk of a loss in revenue."

Proposed remedies include splitting off Chrome or Android, ending search revenue-sharing deals, or requiring Google to share search data with competitors. Google has said it will appeal.

A second DOJ case, focused on Google's dominance in digital advertising, also moved into the remedy phase this week.

Google did not immediately respond to a Business Insider request for comment.

• Nexad, a new startup that wants to put ads in AI apps, raised $6 million in seed funding.
• The startup is both matching ads with audiences and creating them itself.
• Check out the 10-page pitch deck Nexad used to raise investment.

Get ready for ads in your conversations with AI chatbots.

Nexad, an adtech startup building a native advertising solution for AI apps, has raised $6 million in seed funding. The round was led by A16z Speedrun (an accelerator under the Andreessen Horowitz umbrella) and Prosus Ventures, and included participation from firms like Point72 Ventures and Sequoia Capital's Scout Fund.

"Our long-term bet is that the AI application field will be more fragmented and decentralized than the traditional internet platforms," Nexad CEO Jason Hu told Business Insider. In that case, there would be value in a service that can provide advertising across various platforms.

Advertising on AI platforms is still nascent, though some of the largest AI companies are already testing or considering bringing ads into their products. For instance, OpenAI told the Financial Times in December that it was open to exploring advertising. Meanwhile, AI search startup Perplexity began testing ads in November.

Nexad wants to position itself as an AppLovin equivalent for AI apps. AppLovin made its mark by providing advertising within a large network of gaming apps before branching out into e-commerce.

Hu said that Nexad, which was founded in 2024, has onboarded seven AI companies to its network. Those include apps like iAsk (an AI search engine) and Dippy AI (an AI companion app). Hu said there are roughly 30 million consumers that ads across these AI apps can reach.

Hu said Nexad's business has two main arms: one that matches ads with the right audiences, and another that creates the ads themselves.

Nexad runs its application with a "flywheel" model. It starts with a user search query or message sent to a chatbot. Along with the AI app's response, Nexad serves an ad relevant to the original search. Then, it takes the engagement data from interacting with the user and uses it to refine its future ads.

"Ads need to be as smart or even smarter in order to keep up with the content," Hu said.

The startup is focused slightly more on its ad generation offerings, which create text and image ads (Nexad doesn't have video ads yet).

Nexad's network runs through relationships with advertisers, affiliates, and third parties, such as e-commerce affiliate network Sovrn. The startup takes a commission of ad revenue from its publishers. It also offers different models for advertisers, including pay-per-click, per-view, per-install, and per-purchase.

For its ad-generation tech, Hu said Nexad uses open-source large language models like Llama, as well as proprietary models like Gemini, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

Although it's a young space, some other startups, such as ProRata and OpenAds, are making plays in AI advertising.

Nexad's seed investment will be used to hire more staff — it's currently a team of six — and build out more partnerships, Hu said.

Read the 10-page pitch deck Nexad used to raise $6 million.

Note: The company redacted some details in the deck.

Nexad is creating a 'native ads system for the AI era'

The deck starts with an overview of the search market share

"Consumers now discover brands via AI apps," the slide says.

The slide also includes a graph comparing Google and AI chat market share.

Nexad claims traditional search engines are 'dead' and AI chatbots are the new way people search

The slide compares side-by-side the traditional Google search query and using ChatGPT.

Then the deck dives into Nexad's product

"We're building the first AI-native ads system," the slide says.

The company is trying to merge ads into AI apps and increase brand visibility.

It outlines how many AI app users Nexad's ads could reach

The slide says that Nexad has more than 30 million AI app users in its network.

Some publishers include iAsk, Dippy AI, and Bounce (a basketball-themed AI app).

It then includes an example of how a Nexad ad would appear

In this example, the user typed to iAsk "Michael Jordan is so cool, I'm such a huge fan!" and Nexad served an ad for Air Jordan sneakers.

Nexad then explains its generative ad engine

Nexad's generative ad engine is built for contextual awareness and real-time adaptation, the slide says.

The flywheel indicates how the Nexad system works

Here's what Nexad lists as its flywheel:

1. User query
2. Nexad engine
3. Useful ad
4. Engagement data
5. Continuous refinement

The deck concludes by introducing Nexad's team

Here's what the slide says:

Jason Hu, CEO

• ML engineer at Martian; first author of RouterBench
• Monetization at TikTok
• NLP Research @UChicago.

Harry Zhou, COO

• Grew an AI video generator to 1 million users
• $20 billion USD IPO & M&A @Skadden & Cooley, Stanford Law School

Advisors

• Sr. Director @Unity ads
• Director of BD @Uber Ads

Founding Team Members

• Senior architect at Comcast
• Researcher at top AGI lab

It ends with a slide inviting the reader to reach out

Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta exec Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is the new fund launched in 2024 by Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, the UC Berkeley computer scientist who also co-founded Databricks. This isn’t the only check Laude has cut. But it […]

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A new study from Columbia Journalism Review's Tow Center for Digital Journalism finds serious accuracy issues with generative AI models used for news searches. The research tested eight AI-driven search tools equipped with live search functionality and discovered that the AI models incorrectly answered more than 60 percent of queries about news sources.

Researchers Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar noted in their report that roughly 1 in 4 Americans now use AI models as alternatives to traditional search engines. This raises serious concerns about reliability, given the substantial error rate uncovered in the study.

Error rates varied notably among the tested platforms. Perplexity provided incorrect information in 37 percent of the queries tested, whereas ChatGPT Search incorrectly identified 67 percent (134 out of 200) of articles queried. Grok 3 demonstrated the highest error rate, at 94 percent.

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As more people turn to AI chatbots like ChatGPT to look things up on the internet, the way companies approach their online presence has to change. Scrunch AI wants to help enterprises better prepare for a world in which more AI bots and agents visit their website than humans do. Scrunch AI says its platform […]

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It was inevitable that this year at MWC in Barcelona, at least one carrier would announce a major effort at building a smartphone with a top AI company. And here it is: Deutsche Telekom (DT), said that it is building an “AI Phone,” a low-cost handset created in close collaboration with Perplexity, along with Picsart […]

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Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re diving into OpenAI’s newest, biggest model GPT-4.5, Microsoft pulling the plug on Skype, how Anthropic used Pokémon Red to train its Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, the unexpected return of Fyre Festival, and more! Let’s get into it. OpenAI announced the launch of GPT-4.5, the much-anticipated AI […]

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Natural-language search engine Perplexity will launch a web browser, joining a competitive and crowded space that has for years been dominated by Google.

The browser will be called Comet, but we know nothing at all about its features or intended positioning within the browser market at this stage. Comet was announced in an X post with a flashy animation but no details.

Perplexity followed up the X post with a link and an invitation to sign up for beta access to the browser. Those who follow the link will find a barebones website (again with no details) and a simple form for entering an email address.

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AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’s building its own web browser. In a post on X on Monday, the company launched a sign-up list for the browser, which isn’t yet available. It’s unclear when it might be — or what the browser will look like, even. But we do have a name: Comet. “Just like […]

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Perplexity has become the latest AI company to release an in-depth research tool, with a new feature announced Friday. Google unveiled a similar feature for its Gemini AI platform in December. Then OpenAI launched its own research agent earlier this month. All three companies even have given the feature the same name: Deep Research. The […]

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