People are increasingly asking AI, not Google, to help them discover products. A recent shopping report says Americans, this holiday season, will likely turn to large language models to find gifts, deals, and sales instead of traditional search.
Retailers could see up to a 520% increase in traffic from chatbots and AI prompts in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the report. For brands, that means figuring out how to show up in AI-generated recommendations, and fast.
This surge in AI-driven traffic is the bet behind The Prompting Company, a YC-backed startup helping products get mentioned in AI apps through GEO (generative engine optimization), a strategy designed for a future where AI agents browse the internet on users’ behalf.
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 on websites has come from AI bots, not people,” co-founder and CEO Chandra told TechCrunch in an interview. “We’re already seeing developers ask AI tools for product recommendations inside their workflows, and we think people, over time, will be less involved in parts of the purchasing funnel.”
As AI becomes the first touchpoint for product discovery and agents eventually transact on a user’s behalf, The Prompting Company believes brands must learn how to market to agents as well as humans.
What that means, according to Chandra, is that brands will need an AI-facing website, a version of their site made for agents without navigation bars, pop-ups, or marketing fluff. “Most businesses still design websites only for humans,” Chandra told TechCrunch. “But the fastest-growing segment of users on the internet today is AI agents and they need a completely different interface.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
Here’s how the platform works: First, it identifies and analyzes the questions AI agents are asking by probing models to uncover specific purchase-intent queries. It then creates 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-friendly pages so LLMs can cite their answers even when they don’t rank in traditional SEO. (YC has backed similar startups, including Relixir, Writesonic, and Bear.)
While SEO still matters, Chandra argues that GEO is quickly becoming the priority for brands. In GEO, product results surface organically based on relevance to the conversation, not paid keywords or search rankings.
This shift may also change how people buy products. Emerging protocols, including Google’s Agent2Agent framework and OpenAI’s partnership with Stripe, could further accelerate adoption by allowing AI agents to browse and complete purchases on behalf of users, moving them from discovery to transaction.
“Imagine you’re a large e-commerce store. Users can buy items, make returns, compare products, or search for promotions. We help our customers expose those actions to AI agents. Right now, these agents aren’t yet clicking those options or accessing APIs directly, but we expect that to change in the coming months,” said Chandra. “Once that becomes widespread and attribution improves, we see a path toward more advertising- or conversion-driven models. For now, we’re focused on helping companies get discovered and recommended by AI.”
So far, The Prompting Company serves mostly fintech, developer tools, and enterprise SaaS customers. The team says a Fortune 10 company is also using its product, for which it currently hosts about half a million pages.
Overall, traffic driven to client sites is in the double-digit millions per month. The Prompting Company uses a subscription model, charging customers based on the number of prompts tracked and pages hosted.
The company’s founders, Indonesian immigrants who met as freshmen, previously built YC-backed Typedream (YC W20), a startup that allowed users to build and launch websites in minutes with AI, before Lovable and newer entrants took off (beehiiv acquired Typedream last June). The founders also built Cotter, a passwordless authentication SDK that was acquired by Stytch.
With The Prompting Company, they’re trying to change how people discover and purchase products in the AI era. The seed money, raised from Peak XV Partners, Base10, Y Combinator, Firedrop, and angels, including Logan Kilpatrick, will help the company scale its platform and partnerships as AI-powered discovery becomes the new distribution channel. The startup is also collaborating with Nvidia on next-generation AI search.
“If your product isn’t discovered or cited in ChatGPT, you’re ngmi,” said Arnav Sahu, partner at Peak XV Partners. “We’re thrilled to back The Prompting Company as they build the core infrastructure for product discovery — already powering Fortune 10 companies and fast-growing startups. Kevin, Michelle, and Albert are repeat YC founders, and they are awesome.”
