More and more people are turning to AI instead of Google to discover products. This holiday season, Americans are more likely to rely on large-scale language models to find gifts, sales, and deals, rather than traditional search, according to a recent shopping report.
According to the report, retailers could see up to 520% more traffic from chatbots and AI prompts in 2025 compared to 2024. For brands, that means finding ways to quickly appear in AI-generated recommendations.
This AI-driven traffic surge is the bet behind The Prompting Company, a YC-backed startup that helps products get mentioned within AI apps through GEO (Generation Engine Optimization), a strategy designed for a future where AI agents browse the internet on behalf of users.
The four-month-old startup, founded by Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline, and Albert Purnama, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding and already counts Rippling, Rho, Motion, Vapi, Fondo, Kernel, and Traceloop as customers.
“Over the past year, most of the growth in websites has come from AI bots, not people,” co-founder and CEO Chandra told TechCrunch in an interview. “We are already seeing developers asking AI tools for product recommendations within their workflows, and we think that over time people will become less involved in that part of the purchasing funnel.”
As AI becomes the first touchpoint for product discovery and agents ultimately conduct transactions on behalf of users, The Prompting Company believes brands need to learn how to market to agents as well as humans.
What that means, Chandra says, is that brands will need AI-enabled websites, versions made for agents without navigation bars, pop-ups and marketing fluff. “Most companies still design websites just for humans,” Chandra told TechCrunch. “But the fastest growing user group on the internet today is AI agents, and they require a completely different interface.”
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Here’s how this platform works: First, we scrutinize the model to identify and analyze the questions the AI agent asks to uncover specific purchase intent queries. Then, create structured content that answers those questions and automatically routes AI agents to “AI-optimized pages.”
The Y Combinator-backed startup helps companies publish thousands of AI-enabled pages, allowing LLMs to cite answers even if they don’t rank in traditional SEO. (YC has backed similar startups like Relixir, Writesonic, and Bear.)
While SEO remains important, Chandra argues that GEO is quickly becoming a priority for brands. GEO organically displays product results based on relevance to the conversation, rather than paid keywords or search rankings.
This change could also change the way people buy products. Emerging protocols like Google’s Agent2Agent framework and OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe could further accelerate adoption by enabling AI agents to browse and complete purchases on behalf of users, moving from discovery to transaction.
“Imagine you’re a large e-commerce store. Users can buy and return products, compare products, and search for promotions. We help customers expose those actions to AI agents. Currently, these agents are not yet clicking on these options or accessing our APIs directly, but we expect that to change in the coming months,” Chandra said. “As this becomes more widespread and attribution improves, we can see a path towards more advertising and conversion-driven models. For now, we are focused on helping businesses get discovered and recommended by AI.”
So far, The Prompting Company primarily serves fintech, developer tools, and enterprise SaaS customers. The team says Fortune 10 companies also use its product, which currently hosts about 500,000 pages.
Overall, the traffic sent to client sites reaches double-digit millions per month. Prompting Company uses a subscription model and charges customers based on the number of prompts tracked and pages hosted.
The company’s founders are Indonesian immigrants who met as freshmen and had previously founded YC-backed Typedream (YC W20), a startup that allows users to use AI to build and launch websites in minutes (beehiiv acquired Typedream last June), before Lovable and new entrants took off. The founders also built Cotter, a passwordless authentication SDK that was acquired by Stytch.
At The Prompting Company, we’re changing the way people discover and buy products in the age of AI. The seed money raised from angels including Peak XV Partners, Base10, Y Combinator, Firedrop, and Logan Kilpatrick will help the company expand its platform and partnerships as AI-powered discovery becomes a new distribution channel. The startup is also collaborating with Nvidia on next-generation AI search.
“If your product is not discovered or cited on ChatGPT, you are ngmi,” says Arnav Sahu, Partner at Peak XV Partners. “We’re excited to help The Prompting Company build the core infrastructure for product discovery that’s already powering Fortune 10 companies and fast-growing startups. Kevin, Michelle, and Albert are repeat founders of YC, and they’re amazing.”
