As more people turn to ChatGPT instead of Google for their questions, the way products are discovered is evolving. Peec AI has quickly become one of Europe’s most talked-about startups by promising brands greater control and visibility in this rapidly expanding search space.
Only four months after closing its Seed round led by 20VC, the Berlin-based company has secured $21 million in Series A funding, with Singular, a European venture capital firm, leading the round. While CEO Marius Meiners did not reveal the company’s valuation, he shared that it has tripled and now exceeds $100 million.
This funding follows Peec AI’s achievement of surpassing $4 million in annual recurring revenue within just ten months of launching, drawing 1,300 businesses and agencies to its service.
Clients rely on Peec AI to track how their brands are represented in AI-driven searches. In addition to providing analytics on visibility and ranking, the platform also monitors sentiment and identifies which sources influence the responses.
These analytics enable what’s known as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), which allows marketing teams to enhance their brand’s performance in AI search results, much like SEO does for conventional search engines. With this offering, the company reports adding around 300 new clients each month, and the fresh investment will help fuel this momentum and support further expansion.
With support from Antler, Combination VC, identity.vc, and S20 in this latest round, the startup aims to recruit about 40 new team members over the next half year. Most of these positions will be based in Berlin, where Meiners met his cofounders during Antler’s Winter 2024 program: Tobias Siwonia, now CTO, and Daniel Drabo, now CRO.
Rapid growth and strong visibility are likely crucial for success in this emerging sector, which is already seeing competition from companies like Profound in New York and OtterlyAI from Austria.
To attract more talent, the 20-person team is currently promoting itself with large outdoor advertisements across Berlin. Beyond its local hiring plans, Meiners shared with TechCrunch that Peec AI intends to open a sales office in New York City in the second quarter of next year.
As more GEO tools hit the market and SEO dashboards start integrating AI tracking, Peec AI aims to stand out by providing marketing teams with a dashboard that grows in functionality while staying user-friendly, even as AI search evolves rapidly.
Unlike traditional SEO tools that focus on keywords, Peec AI’s dashboard is built around prompts that brands want to rank for in AI search results. Users can monitor up to 25 prompts for €75 per month ($87), or up to 100 prompts for €169 per month ($196). Both plans come with free trials, while the enterprise package starts at €424 per month ($493) without a trial option.
To help users act on these insights, the dashboard offers recommendations to boost both visibility and positive sentiment. For example, it might suggest that a company aiming to be recognized as a top CRM for fast-growing businesses should participate in discussions on the r/CRM subreddit on Reddit.
Such suggestions are tied to the “source insights” feature at the heart of Peec AI, which can inform users’ content strategies. The company has found that being mentioned in major media outlets doesn’t always result in more visibility than articles from smaller publications, especially when those headlines closely match the original search question—such as “the best healthcare investors in Berlin.”
Notable clients already using Peec AI’s platform include Axel Springer, Chanel, n8n, ElevenLabs, TUI, and others, as AI-driven search becomes more prevalent in both B2C and B2B contexts. However, since users also turn to ChatGPT and similar tools for a wide range of queries, the company must sift through a lot of unrelated data behind the scenes.
To address this, Peec AI has acquired raw datasets of these queries, but that’s only the first step. “We need to filter all this information to pinpoint the questions people are actually asking about brands, purchases, and services,” Meiners explained.
Despite its straightforward interface, Peec AI’s proprietary data pipeline could be the secret to its success. This highlights that the value in AI extends beyond just the models, as the application layer and underlying data are becoming key areas for European startups like Peec AI.
