As AI-powered search tools change the way businesses are discovered online, Indian-founded startup Gushwork, which helps businesses acquire customers from platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, is starting to gain investor support with early traction.
The two-year-old startup announced Thursday that it has raised $9 million in a seed round led by Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Lightspeed, with participation from B Capital, Seaborn Capital, BeNext, Sparrow Capital and 2.2 Capital. The round brings Gushwork’s post-money valuation to $33 million, up from about $7.5 million after a $2.1 million pre-seed led by Lightspeed in July 2023, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The latest funding brings Gushwork’s total funding to $11 million, the startup said.
The funding comes as AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexity begin chipping away at traditional web search, prompting incumbents like Google to roll out AI-generated summaries and other conversational features across their search products. Gushwork is betting that this shift will create new opportunities to use automated marketing agents to help companies emerge in AI-driven discovery channels.
Founded in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya (pictured above, right) and Adithya Venkatesh (pictured above, left), Gushwork initially focused on combining AI and human expertise to help small and medium-sized businesses outsource their workflows. The startup began focusing on search-driven marketing after seeing strong customer demand for increased online visibility.
“When we started, we were focused on helping businesses outsource faster and outsource better,” Bhattacharyya told TechCrunch in an interview, adding that the pull for search from customers became increasingly impossible to ignore.
Gushwork’s platform uses a network of AI agents to automatically generate and update search-optimized content. Build backlinks (typically 10-20 per customer) through a network of approximately 200-300 partner websites. Track inbound leads through an integrated content management system. The goal, Bhattacharyya said, is to help businesses emerge in both traditional search results and AI-generated answers without relying on large in-house marketing teams.
The company said it has signed up more than 300 paying customers, about 95% of whom are in the United States, with subscriptions starting at $800 per month. Since rolling out its AI search-focused product about three months ago, Gushwork is currently generating annual recurring revenue of about $1.5 million and is targeting ARR of $3 million to $3.5 million over the next three months, Bhattacharyya said, adding that the startup is growing about 50% to 80% month over month.
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Currently, about 20% of website traffic across Gushwork’s customer base comes from AI-driven search and chat platforms, while these sources account for about 40% of inbound leads, Bhattacharya said, citing the startup’s internal data.
Bhattacharyya said higher-intent leads are already leading to business outcomes for some customers. In one case, a professional services customer signed a contract worth between $200,000 and $350,000 after implementing the platform, he said, without disclosing the customer’s name. He added that many users are seeing meaningful growth in their pipelines as AI-driven discovery gains momentum.
Gushwork’s current customer base is primarily focused on high-value B2B service providers, industrial distributors and contract manufacturers in the United States, Bhattacharyya said. He added that the startup’s average subscription costs about $800 to $900 per month, or about $9,000 to $10,000 annually.
The transition to AI-driven discovery is still in its early stages, but it is gaining momentum. Tools such as generative AI chatbots and AI web browsers are increasingly being used by buyers to research vendors and products. OpenAI announced in July 2025 that ChatGPT receives approximately 2.5 billion prompts per day worldwide, including approximately 330 million prompts from US users. Bhattacharya said this trend is causing some companies to start changing the way they approach online visibility.
Gushwork plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering team, improve the accuracy of its models and expand its go-to-market efforts, Bhattacharyya said. He added that the startup has over 800 companies on its waiting list and plans to begin onboarding.
The startup is headquartered in Delaware, has an office in Bengaluru, and has about 70 employees in India, along with several contractors.
