People are increasingly asking AI, not Google, to assist them find products. A current one Shopping According to the report, Americans will likely turn to large language models to seek out gifts, deals and special offers this holiday season moderately than traditional search.
According to the report, retailers could see as much as a 520% increase in traffic from chatbots and AI prompts in 2025 in comparison with 2024. For brands, which means determining the best way to show up in AI-generated recommendations, and quickly.
This rise in AI-driven traffic is why The requesting companya YC-backed startup that helps get products mentioned in AI apps through GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), a technique designed for a future where AI agents surf the online on behalf of users.
The four-month-old startup founded by Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline And Albert Punamahas raised $6.5 million in seed funding and already counts Rippling, Rho, Motion, Vapi, Fondo, Kernel and Traceloop amongst its customers.
“Over the past yr, a lot of the growth on web sites has come from AI bots, not people,” said co-founder and CEO Chandra in an interview with TechCrunch. “We’re already seeing developers asking AI tools for product recommendations of their workflows, and we expect people to change into less involved in parts of the shopping funnel over time.”
As AI becomes the primary touchpoint for product discovery and agents ultimately transact on a user's behalf, The Prompting Company believes brands have to learn the best way to market for each agents and other people.
According to Chandra, this implies brands need an AI-focused website, an agent-focused version of their website without navigation bars, pop-ups, or marketing filler. “Most firms still design web sites only for people,” Chandra told TechCrunch. “But the fastest-growing segment of users on the web today are AI agents, and so they require a totally different interface.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
27–29 October 2025
Here's how the platform works: First, it identifies and analyzes the questions AI agents ask by testing models to uncover specific purchase intent queries. It then creates structured content that answers these questions and robotically redirects AI agents to “AI-optimized pages.”
The Y Combinator-backed startup helps firms publish 1000’s of AI-friendly pages so LLMs can cite their answers even in the event that they don't rank in traditional search engine optimization. (YC has backed similar startups including Relixir, Writesonic and Bear.)
While search engine optimization continues to be necessary, Chandra argues that GEO is quickly becoming a priority for brands. In GEO, product results appear organically based on relevance to the conversation, not paid keywords or search rankings.
This shift also can change the best way people buy products. New protocols, including Google's agent-to-agent framework and OpenAI's partnership with Stripe, could further speed up adoption by allowing AI agents to browse and complete purchases on behalf of users, moving from discovery to transaction.
“Imagine you're a big e-commerce store. Users can buy items, make returns, compare products, or seek for promotions. We help our customers display these promotions to AI agents. Currently, these agents don't click on these options or access APIs directly, but we expect that to vary in the approaching months,” Chandra said. “Once this becomes widespread and attribution improves, we see a path to more promoting or conversion-driven models. For now, we're focused on helping firms get discovered and advisable by AI.”
To date, The Prompting Company primarily serves fintech, developer tools, and enterprise SaaS customers. The team says a Fortune 10 company also uses its product, for which it currently hosts about half one million pages.
Overall, traffic to customer sites is within the double-digit million range per 30 days. The Prompting Company uses a subscription model where customers are charged based on the variety of prompts tracked and pages hosted.
The company's founders, Indonesian immigrants who met as college freshmen, previously built it with the support of YC Type dream (YC W20), a startup that enabled users to construct and launch web sites in minutes using AI, before Lovable and newer entrants took off (beehiiv acquired Typedream last June). The founders also developed Cotter, a passwordless authentication SDK that was acquired by Stytch.
With The Prompting Company, they are attempting to vary the best way people discover and buy products within the AI age. The seed capital raised by Peak The startup can be collaborating with NVIDIA on next-generation AI search.
“If your product isn’t being discovered or cited in ChatGPT, it’s you,” said Arnav Sahu, partner at Peak XV Partners. “We're excited to assist The Prompting Company construct the core product development infrastructure – powering Fortune 10 firms and fast-growing startups. Kevin, Michelle and Albert are repeat YC founders and so they're great.”
