The AI visibility directory lists the companies, players and leaders shaping how brands appear in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. It covers 17 software companies with pricing, funding and owners, the SEO suites, AI engines and agencies around them, and the founders and investors behind them. Profound leads on funding at $334.5 million, and Rankscale, Otterly.AI and AthenaHQ lead on low-cost entry.
Last updated: November 3, 2026. Prices and funding figures come from company announcements, vendor pages and third-party reviews, and they change often. Confirm current terms with each vendor before buying.
Summary
- The directory has four parts: 17 software companies, the players around them (AI engines, SEO suites, PR tools and agencies), the leaders who run them, and the investors who fund them.
- Profound is the best-funded company, with $334.5 million announced across five rounds and a $1.8 billion valuation after its September 15, 2026 Series D.
- Three acquisitions have reshaped the field: Sitecore bought Scrunch on June 3, 2026, Adobe completed its Semrush purchase on April 28, 2026, and HubSpot bought XFunnel in October 2025.
- Entry prices run from free (AthenaHQ Essential) and about €20 a month (Rankscale) to custom enterprise quotes (Profound, Brandlight).
- Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Greylock and Felicis are among the named investors leading rounds in the category.
- Companies EPR has profiled link to their profile, and the pricing and engine comparison is in Best AI Visibility Tools.
| Company | What it does | Reported entry price | Funding or owner | HQ |
|---|
| Profound | Enterprise visibility platform and agents | Custom Enterprise; self-serve plans dropped in September 2026, per one review | $334.5M announced; $1.8B valuation | New York |
| Peec AI | Monitoring and analytics for marketing teams and agencies | $95, $245 and $495 a month | About $29M; $21M Series A led by Singular | Berlin |
| Brandlight | Enterprise AI visibility program | Custom pricing | About $36M; $30M Series A led by Pelion | New York and Israel |
| Bluefish | Agentic marketing for Fortune 500 brands | Not published in the sources reviewed | $68M; $43M Series B in April 2026 | New York |
| AirOps | Content engineering for AI search | Not published in the sources reviewed | $55.5M, per the company; Greylock-led Series B | San Francisco and New York |
| Scrunch | Monitoring plus an AI-readable site layer | Starter $250 a month billed annually | Acquired by Sitecore, June 2026; about $26M raised | Salt Lake City |
| AthenaHQ | Analytics and recommendations | Free tier; Starter $295 a month | About $2.7M seed; Y Combinator | San Francisco |
| Rankscale | Credit-based tracking across 17 or more engines | From €20 a month; Pro $99 | Self-funded | Vienna |
| geoSurge | Monitoring plus Corpus Engineering | Not published in the sources reviewed | $12M seed led by AlbionVC, July 2026 | London |
| Evertune | Enterprise analytics at prompt scale | Not published in the sources reviewed | About $19M; $15M Series A led by Felicis | New York |
| Otterly.AI | Monitoring for small brands and agencies | $29 a month and up | Self-funded | Vienna |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | AI mentions and citations inside an SEO suite | $199 a month per AI index | Owned by Ahrefs, which has raised no outside capital | Singapore |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | AI visibility inside an SEO suite | $99 a month per domain | Owned by Adobe since April 28, 2026 | Boston |
| Jasper | Enterprise content platform with a GEO Agent launched in June 2026 | Individual plans from $29 a month; Enterprise custom | $131M raised; $125M Series A at $1.5B in October 2022 | Austin |
| Goodie AI | Answer engine optimization platform | Not published in the sources reviewed | No funding reported | New York |
| BrandRank.AI | AI brand-perception scoring | Not published in the sources reviewed | $5M seed led by Mayfield, per EPR's earlier tracker | Cincinnati |
| Promptwatch | Monitoring with content tools | About $95 a month, per reviews | Seed round, July 2026, per Dealroom | Not confirmed |
Pricing and engine detail for the ten most-shortlisted tools is in Best AI Visibility Tools: 10 Platforms Compared. Funding totals differ between databases for AirOps, Scrunch and AthenaHQ, so the table shows the company-stated figure where one exists.
Who are the other players in AI visibility?
Four groups of players sit around the software companies: the AI engines themselves, the SEO suites that added AI visibility, AI-native PR and monitoring tools, and the agencies that do the work. They matter because each controls part of how a brand gets cited.
AI engines and platforms
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews are the surfaces every tool measures. Perplexity is the engine most closely tied to citation behavior, and Glean sells enterprise search. EPR tracks which sources the engines cite in the AI Platform Citation Source Index 2026.
SEO suites
Ahrefs, Semrush, Conductor and HubSpot have each folded AI visibility into larger products. Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on April 28, 2026, and launched Adobe Brand Visibility in June 2026, which combines its LLM Optimizer with Semrush data, according to Search Engine Land. HubSpot bought XFunnel in October 2025 for about $30 million in cash, per Dealroom. EPR covers how these incumbents responded to funded startups in SEO Platforms vs. GEO Startups.
AI-native PR and monitoring tools
Muck Rack, Memo, Signal AI, Cision and Meltwater sell media monitoring and pitching tools that now add AI visibility features. EPR profiles the legacy vendors in its PR tools stack guide and the Cision profile.
Agencies
Software shows where a brand stands, and agencies earn the coverage, entity records and research that change the result. 5W, a PR, creative and AI Visibility agency founded in 2003 with offices in Miami, New York and Tampa, ranks first on published evidence in both EPR agency rankings, and it is affiliated with Everything-PR, as the disclosure below states. EPR ranks the firms in Best AI Visibility Agencies and Best GEO Agencies 2026, and daydream, an AI-native SEO and AEO agency that raised a $15M Series A led by WndrCo in April 2026, sits between the software and agency groups.
Who are the leaders in AI visibility?
The leaders in AI visibility are the founders and chief executives of the companies above, the heads of the agencies that do the work, and the investors who backed the category early. The table names each leader, the company they run or fund, and where to read more. EPR plans individual profiles for these leaders, and for now each one links to the company profile.
| Leader | Role | Company | Why they matter |
|---|
| James Cadwallader | Co-founder and CEO | Profound | Built the category's first unicorn, with $334.5M raised |
| Dylan Babbs | Co-founder | Profound | Co-founded Profound with Cadwallader in 2024 |
| Marius Meiners | Co-founder and CEO | Peec AI | Leads the European flagship, with a reported $10M ARR in May 2026 |
| Imri Marcus | CEO | Brandlight | Leads the Israeli-founded enterprise platform |
| Alex Halliday | Founder and CEO | AirOps | Leads the content engineering platform |
| Chris Andrew | CEO | Scrunch | Sold the company to Sitecore in June 2026 |
| Andrew Yan | CEO | AthenaHQ | Former Google Search product manager |
| Mathias Ptacek | Founder and CEO | Rankscale | Runs a bootstrapped tracker with a co-founder, Patrick Schmid |
| Dmitry Gerasimenko | Founder | Ahrefs | Founded the bootstrapped SEO company behind Brand Radar |
| Timothy Young | CEO | Jasper | Led Jasper's enterprise pivot and GEO launch |
| Ronn Torossian | Founder and Chairman of 5W; Publisher of Everything-PR | 5W, a PR, creative and AI Visibility agency founded in 2003 and based in Miami | Leads the agency that ranked first among PR companies at 28.8% AI brand visibility in its October 29, 2026 report, How to Get Into the Chatbox, according to 5W's analysis using Profound's tools. 5W's positioning is that it gets brands into the chatbox; see EPR's 5W profile |
| Anas Biad | Partner | Sequoia Capital | Led Profound's Series B; see EPR's profile of the thesis |
| Mike King | Founder | iPullRank | Named Search Engine Land's 2025 AI Search Marketer of the Year, per iPullRank's announcement |
How much funding has AI visibility raised, and who has been acquired?
More than $450 million of announced venture capital has gone into Profound, Peec AI, Bluefish and Brandlight alone since January 2025, and three acquisitions have already happened. The table lists the rounds and deals that define the category.
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|
| September 15, 2026 | Profound Series D | $180M at a $1.8B valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins |
| July 2026 | geoSurge seed | $12M led by AlbionVC |
| June 3, 2026 | Sitecore acquires Scrunch | Price not disclosed; some coverage reported about $225M, citing Bloomberg |
| April 28, 2026 | Adobe completes Semrush purchase | Announced as roughly $1.9B all-cash, per trade press |
| April 2026 | Bluefish Series B | $43M, co-led by Threshold Ventures and NEA |
| February 2026 | Brandlight Series A and Profound Series C | $30M led by Pelion; $96M at $1B led by Lightspeed |
| November 2025 | Peec AI Series A and AirOps Series B | $21M led by Singular; $40M led by Greylock |
| October 2025 | HubSpot acquires XFunnel | About $30M in cash, per Dealroom |
Three patterns stand out. Measurement products raised first and optimization came later. Enterprise sellers (Profound, Bluefish, Brandlight) raised the larger rounds while self-serve tools (Peec AI, Rankscale, Otterly.AI) competed on price. And the buyers of acquired companies are marketing-cloud and SEO incumbents, which is the exit path Adobe and Sitecore have now used.
Which investors back AI visibility companies?
The named lead investors in AI visibility are Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins at Profound, Lightspeed at Profound's Series C, Singular at Peec AI, Pelion at Brandlight, Threshold Ventures and NEA at Bluefish, Greylock at AirOps, Felicis at Evertune and AlbionVC at geoSurge. The table lists each investor with the company, round and date, using only rounds named elsewhere on this page.
| Investor | Company | Round and size | Date |
|---|
| Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins (co-leads) | Profound | Series D, $180M at a $1.8B valuation | September 15, 2026 |
| Lightspeed | Profound | Series C, $96M at $1B | February 2026 |
| Singular | Peec AI | Series A, $21M | November 2025 |
| Pelion | Brandlight | Series A, $30M | February 2026 |
| Threshold Ventures and NEA (co-leads) | Bluefish | Series B, $43M | April 2026 |
| Greylock | AirOps | Series B, $40M | November 2025 |
| Felicis | Evertune | Series A, $15M | Reported as August 2025 in EPR's tool comparison |
| AlbionVC | geoSurge | Seed, $12M | July 2026 |
| WndrCo | daydream (agency) | Series A, $15M | April 2026 |
| Mayfield | BrandRank.AI | Seed, $5M, per EPR's earlier tracker | Not confirmed |
| Y Combinator | AthenaHQ | Seed, about $2.7M | Not confirmed |
Sequoia's Anas Biad led Profound's Series B, and EPR explains the thesis in its profile of the investment. Enterprise-focused companies drew the large-fund leads, while self-funded tools such as Rankscale and Otterly.AI took no outside capital.
How should a buyer use this directory?
A buyer should start with the job to be done, then narrow by budget and owner. The table matches each job to the companies in the directory that fit it, and the steps after it show how to shortlist.
| Job to be done | Companies to shortlist | Why |
|---|
| Monitoring on a budget | Rankscale, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, or an SEO-suite add-on | Entry plans start from about €20 to $99 a month, with prompt or engine caps on the cheapest tiers |
| Free trial of analytics | AthenaHQ | The only free tier on published prices |
| Enterprise programs | Profound, Brandlight, Bluefish | Custom pricing and the largest funding rounds in the category |
| AI-readable site layer | Scrunch (now part of Sitecore) | Pairs monitoring with content delivered to AI agents |
| Content execution | AirOps, Jasper | Content engineering and a GEO Agent launched in June 2026 |
| Already using an SEO suite | Ahrefs Brand Radar, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | AI visibility sits inside a product the team already owns |
| Earned coverage and research | An agency, such as those in Best AI Visibility Agencies | Software reports a result, and an agency earns the placements that change it |
- Decide whether you need measurement only or also content and coverage changes.
- Shortlist two or three companies from the table and read their EPR profiles.
- Ask each vendor which engines are included in the plan, since counts differ between reviews.
- Check who owns the company, because acquisitions change pricing and roadmaps.
- Pair the tool with an agency or in-house team, since software reports a result and does not change it.
The AI visibility audit guide explains how to run a baseline with any tool, and the GEO Services Cost Guide shows what agency programs cost.
How is the directory built and updated?
The directory lists companies that sell or shape AI visibility, using company announcements, vendor pages, regulatory filings and named third-party reviews, many of them written by competing vendors. Funding figures are disclosed rounds only, and EPR shows the company-stated figure where databases disagree.
EPR updates the directory when a round closes, a company is acquired or a price changes. Corrections go to editorial@everything-pr.com. Companies are listed on the evidence of what they sell, not on payment, and inclusion is not an endorsement.
