Scrunch AI Enhances Company Visibility in AI Search

# ChatGPT # siri # mayfield

As more folks are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT for their internet searches, companies need to rethink how they present themselves online. Scrunch AI is stepping in to help businesses get ready for a future where AI bots might outnumber human visitors to their websites. Scrunch AI's platform helps companies keep an eye on and improve how they show up on various AI search platforms. It also gives them a clearer picture of how AI web crawlers interact with their online content. The system updates every three days, allowing companies to see how their information appears in AI search results from different customer queries across various demographics. Chris Andrew, a co-founder and CEO of Scrunch (the guy on the right in the picture above), mentioned that the platform also helps businesses spot information gaps and fix inaccuracies. For instance, if an AI search engine is pulling pricing info from an outdated section of a company's website, Scrunch AI can help identify this issue so the company can update or remove that section to enhance their search results. Andrew, who used to be the chief product officer at Hearsay Systems, got the idea for Scrunch AI when he noticed a shift in his own online habits. "I realized I was visiting fewer websites," he said. "I was expecting an answer from ChatGPT instead of sifting through 20 links from Google. It hit me that browsing, which is inherently inefficient, might be the first thing to be outsourced to AI agents and crawlers on a large scale. If that's the case, the entire way customers interact with brands online is going to change." He bounced the idea off a few CMOs he'd worked with before, and they confirmed that their companies were seeing high-quality traffic from AI search engines. But they also noticed that identical queries about their companies were yielding different results on different AI search platforms. "Your brand isn't just what you say it is anymore," Andrew pointed out. "It's what you say, plus what third parties and competitors say. You'll need to monitor and understand this at scale." Andrew launched Scrunch AI in the fall of 2023 with co-founder and CTO Robert MacCloy (the guy on the left in the picture above), and they rolled out the product in November 2024. They've already signed up 25 customers, including big names like Lenovo, BairesDev, and Penn State University. Scrunch AI recently raised a $4 million seed round led by Mayfield, with additional backing from angel investors like Clara Shih, former co-founder and CEO of Hearsay Systems; TJ Parker, a co-founder of PillPack; and Bryant Chou, a co-founder of Webflow. The company plans to use this money to keep developing their product. Of course, Scrunch AI isn't the only one eyeing this opportunity. Profound is working on helping companies monitor their SEO presence through dashboards where brands can input queries and track results, and they've raised $3.5 million in venture capital. Even traditional marketing and PR agencies like Avenue Z are jumping on the bandwagon, offering to help companies improve their visibility in AI search. This market's definitely got room to grow. Andrew believes Scrunch AI stands out because it focuses on the entire customer journey, not just how a brand appears in initial search results. He's also pushing the envelope by considering not just searches made by humans through AI search engines, but also those performed by AI agents. "I think people were like, 'How do we use AI to make our website better?' But my thought was, 'Your website's going to need to cater to an agent or crawler in the future,'" Andrew said. "That idea has really resonated with our enterprise-level customers, who are realizing that their brand is now defined by what ChatGPT, Gemini, Siri, or Google AI Overviews say it is."

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