🚀#5 Next in VC : Generative Engine Optimization

The SEO game changer nobody expected

🔑 Key Takeaways

• As AI reshapes search, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is emerging as the next $100B+ infrastructure play in content visibility.

• Traditional SEO stacks are loosing ground. GEO will power how brands stay discoverable in AI-generated answers.

• Startups building GEO infrastructure will power the next content discovery layer—and become critical pipes in the AI-native internet.

🔗What is GEO ?

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the evolution of SEO for a world where AI replaces search engines. Instead of typing queries into Google and clicking links, users now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's Search Generative Experience—and receive synthesized answers pulled from the web. These systems don’t link, they respond. And the game has changed: if your content isn’t part of the answer, it doesn’t exist.

Unlike SEO, which relies on keyword density, backlinks, and metadata, GEO focuses on structuring content for LLMs. That means writing in clean, semantically rich formats (FAQs, lists, definitions), showing topical authority, and earning AI trust signals like accuracy, experience, and clarity. The ultimate KPI? Not traffic. Not CTR. It’s “share of answer”—how often your content is cited, paraphrased, or synthesized in AI outputs.

🧠Why and why now ?

For two decades, visibility online meant ranking in Google’s top results. But today, AI engines like ChatGPT, Google SGE, and Perplexity are bypassing the click altogether—surfacing instant answers, not lists of links. As a result, organic traffic is drying up, even for SEO juggernauts like HubSpot and Chegg, who’ve seen massive drops in visits and engagement as their content gets summarized but not clicked.

According to Gartner, traditional search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents. By 2028, brands’ organic search traffic will decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search.The rapid adoption of GenAI in search engines will significantly disrupt CMOs’ ability to harness organic search to drive sales. The Gartner survey of 299 consumers in August 2023 found consumers are ready for AI-enhanced search, with 79% of respondents expecting to use it within the next year. Furthermore, 70% of consumers expressed at least some trust in GenAI-backed search results.

This isn’t an incremental change—it’s a structural collapse of the SEO paradigm. And what fills that void isn’t more keyword tools, it’s GEO: the foundational infrastructure layer that determines whether your brand is included in the answer. In this new game, visibility depends on whether your content is trusted, structured, and usable by LLMs—not just indexed by Google.

The timing is critical. AI-driven search is already mainstream—Perplexity has >100M monthly visits, ChatGPT powers Bing and now SearchGPT, and Google’s SGE is rolling out worldwide. Yet most of the $100B+ spent annually on SEO is still tuned for the old internet. That spend is about to shift.

And here’s where GEO stands out as a massive opportunity. Many AI startups are riding the LLM wave with thin wrappers, undifferentiated AI interfaces, or low-value application layer. Therefore, general LLM players are killing those AI start-ups everyday by delivering new features and products. On the contrary, GEO startups solve a deep, defensible problem tied to distribution and brand survival. They offer scalable tooling—AI visibility tracking, schema optimization, prompt-aware formatting—that can be embedded in every CMS, marketing team, and enterprise growth stack. GEO isn’t a feature on top of LLM as an application layer. It’s the new distribution layer of the AI-powered web. GEO solutions will power a new stack: AI-rank tracking, schema formatting, prompt-aware content modeling, LLM visibility analytics, and citation scoring. Every company that depends on digital discovery—media, SaaS, e-commerce, B2B—will need these tools to survive in an AI-dominated landscape.

💸The opportunity for VCs?

✅ Timing: We’re at the tipping point. AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s SGE are replacing traditional search interfaces—delivering synthesized responses instead of lists of links. As a result, even SEO giants like HubSpot and Chegg are seeing traffic evaporate as their content is summarized without attribution or clicks. This isn’t a future trend—it’s already happening, and most brands aren’t ready.
Meanwhile, most of the SEO and content tooling ecosystem remains built for the old internet. The window to build new infrastructure—GEO-native tools that help brands remain visible in AI-first search experiences—is now.

✅ TAM: Current SEO software market is huge and is expected to keep growing at very fast pace. According to Precedence research, the global SEO software market size is evaluated at USD 84.94 billion in 2025 and is forecasted to hit around USD 265.91 billion by 2034, growing at a notable CAGR of 13.52% from 2025 to 2034.

✅ Exit paths: GEO sits at the intersection of content, AI, and infrastructure—a prime target for M&A. Potential buyers include:

• SEO incumbents (Semrush, Ahrefs, Conductor) expanding into AI-native search.

• Martech platforms (HubSpot, Adobe, Salesforce) seeking to protect their core.

• Big AI/Cloud players (OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic) looking to improve content quality and citation tracking within their models.
  Just like Google’s algorithm updates once created entire acquisition waves around SEO optimization, GEO tools will be essential infrastructure for the new AI search layer—and early entrants will hold outsized value

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Here’s a curated (non-exhaustive) list of early-stage startups specializing in GEO, organized by maturity stage.

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🎯Deal Flow & Sourcing

🌱 Seed & Serie A - Ready to pump

Goodie AI (UK) – Bootstrapped, no fundraising yet
Built a visual “GEO map” to help brands understand which of their pages or assets are surfaced by AI tools. Their platform scores content based on LLM-readability, citation structure, and answer likelihood. Strong traction among SEO consultants and AI-first media outlets.

AthenaHQ (US) – Seed (2,6M€, 2024, FundersClub, YC combinator)
Early leader in “answer share” analytics. Tracks brand citations across LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) and recommends content changes to improve inclusion in AI-generated responses. Offers dashboards for marketers to monitor “AI visibility” performance across models and domains. Developed specific GEO analytics to measure performance

Omnius (EU) – Undisclosed fundraising. Full-service SEO/GEO agency mainly for B2B SaaS. Offers schema injection, structured formatting, and crawl-readiness audits tailored for LLMs. Works with emerging AI-native businesses across fintech and HR tech. Positioning itself as the “Clearscope of the GEO era.”

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🔚 Final Thoughts — What Will Separate the Winners from the Noise?

As GEO emerges as the next strategic layer of the AI-powered internet, not every player will survive the hype cycle. Like early SEO and adtech waves before it, this market will reward depth, defensibility, and infrastructure value—not superficial wrappers.

The winners will be those who:

• Build proprietary insight layers—not just repackaged SEO dashboards, but real AI-native analytics on visibility, citation rates, and LLM behaviors.

• Embed into existing workflows (CMS, CRM, analytics) and create “set-and-scale” tooling that marketing teams can’t live without.

• Stay ahead of LLM evolution—as models get better at reasoning, backtracking, and citing sources, the bar for inclusion will rise fast. Static solutions won’t keep up.

• Own distribution moats: access to training data pipelines, API-level model integrations, or feedback loops with foundation models themselves.

The losers? Tools that simply track keywords or wrap OpenAI’s output in dashboards. GEO isn’t a feature or a trend—it’s a new distribution protocol. And like every distribution shift in tech, the biggest value will go to those who build rails, not just ride them.

The next few quarters will separate the tactical tools from the foundational ones. For VCs, now is the time to bet on the infra—because in the world of AI search, being the source is everything.

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