GEO Platforms in 2026: Funding, Prices and Link Strength Compared

GEO platforms are tools that check how AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Claude mention, cite and describe your brand. As of October 2026 the market has one unicorn (Profound, valued at $1.8 billion after a $180 million Series D in September), a run of acquisitions by bigger software companies, and self-serve tools with entry prices from about $17 to $599 a month.

This page replaces our April 2026 market study and funding analysis. Every funding round below was re-checked on 2026-10-16 against the company's own announcement, an investor or law-firm release, an SEC filing or reputable press. Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page on the same day. Link-strength numbers were re-pulled the same day, and they mean less than our April posts implied, for reasons we explain.

What a GEO platform does, and what none of them can do

Every GEO platform works the same way at its core: it sends a set of prompts to AI platforms, stores the answers, and reports whether your brand was mentioned, which sources were cited, and how you were described. The differences are in which platforms are covered, how answers are collected, and what the tool does with the result.

• Monitoring: mention rate, citations, sentiment and share of voice against competitors. Every vendor below does this.
• Content and recommendations: AirOps, Goodie, AthenaHQ, Promptwatch and others generate or suggest content. No study shows a content tactic reliably gets a page retrieved by live AI platforms. A 2026 survey of 45 GEO studies found no technique with a stable, cross-platform causal effect on organic discoverability, though content that is already retrieved can change how it is cited.
• Accuracy and access: a smaller set checks whether AI states your facts correctly, or whether AI crawlers can reach your site at all. These are the checks with a documented cause and effect.

What no platform can do, whatever the sales deck says:

• Report a verified rank inside an AI answer. Google says "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems".
• See the real prompts. No AI platform publishes the prompts its users type, so every tool tests prompts it chose. And ChatGPT search "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries" before it searches.
• Guarantee a citation. Even OpenAI's own ranking disclosure is that it uses "multiple factors".

The GEO platform landscape at a glance (October 2026)

Platform	Base	Funding (disclosed)	Entry price, 2026-10-16	US brand searches / month
Profound	New York, 2024	$334.5M across five rounds; Series D $180M (Sep 2026)	Brands: free 7-day trial, then custom Enterprise. Agencies: self-serve Agency Growth, client workspaces $399/mo each	6,600 ("profound ai")
Peec AI	Berlin, 2025	$29M total; Series A $21M (Nov 2025)	Starter $95/mo (50 prompts, 3 models); Pro $245/mo	2,900
Bluefish	New York	$68M total; Series B $43M (Apr 2026)	Demo only	1,600
Scrunch (Sitecore)	Founded 2023	$15M Series A (Jul 2025); acquired by Sitecore (Jun 2026)	From $250/mo	1,900
AthenaHQ	San Francisco, 2025 (YC W25)	$2.2M (Jun 2025)	Free Essential tier; Starter $295/mo	1,000
Evertune	New York, 2024	Series A $15M (Aug 2025), after a $4M seed	Starter $60/mo billed annually (self-serve); Pro $800/mo billed annually; Enterprise custom	720 ("evertune ai")
AirOps	New York	Series B $40M (Nov 2025)	Not checked (content platform)	8,100
Promptwatch	Amsterdam	€6M seed (2026)	7-day free trial; Essential $95/mo	590
Otterly.AI	Austria	No disclosed round found	Lite $29/mo	880 ("otterly ai")
Goodie AI	—	Not verified	Core $295/mo, 7-day trial	590
Gauge	San Francisco, 2024 (YC S24)	Y Combinator; no priced round found	Growth $599/mo	260 ("gauge ai")
LLMrefs	—	No disclosed round found	All in One $79/mo, 7-day trial	260
Rankscale	—	No disclosed round found	Essentials $17/mo billed yearly; Pro $99/mo	480
99Visibility (us)	Torch99	—	Free plan; Starter $49/mo	—

Brand searches are Google Ads US estimates, averaged over October 2025 to September 2026 and pulled on 2026-10-16 (method in our generative engine optimization statistics). Where a brand name is also a common word or another product, we used the term with "ai" added. "profound ai" carries a small namesake baseline from before the company existed, and "airops" is shared with an unrelated phrase, so read those two as upper bounds.

The incumbents also sell AI visibility now: Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit (3,600 US searches a month on the 12-month average, though only 880 by September 2026), HubSpot AEO (880) and Ahrefs Brand Radar (320). How they compare with the dedicated tools is in GEO platforms vs SEO incumbents.

Profound funding: every round to date

Round	Amount	Lead	Announced	Valuation
Seed	$3.5M	No lead named (round included Keith Rabois)	2024-08-13	Not disclosed
Series A	$20M	Kleiner Perkins	2025-06-18	Not disclosed
Series B	$35M	Sequoia	2025-08-12	Not disclosed
Series C	$96M	Lightspeed Venture Partners	2026-02-24	$1B
Series D	$180M	Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins	2026-09-15	$1.8B

That is $334.5 million in disclosed rounds in a little over two years. The Series D was announced seven months after the Series C, and TechCrunch reports Profound has "more than 1,000 enterprise customers". The Series C announcement brought disclosed rounds to $154.5 million at that point.

Two corrections to our April posts. We called Profound's $35M Series B its latest round, but Profound had already raised a $96M Series C, led by Lightspeed, on 2026-02-24. And we called Peec's $29M a Series A; $29M is its total, and the Series A was $21M. Searches for "profound funding" hit a record 480 in the US in September 2026, the month of the Series D.

GEO companies and startups: who raised what

Company	Event	Amount	Lead or buyer	Date
Sitecore + Scrunch	Acquisition	Not disclosed	Sitecore	2026-06-03
Adobe + Semrush	Acquisition closed	Not restated here	Adobe	2026-04-28
Bluefish	Series B	$43M	Threshold Ventures and NEA	2026-04-14
Promptwatch	Seed	€6M	Seed + Speed	2026
Peec AI	Series A	$21M	Singular	2025-11-18
AirOps	Series B	$40M	Greylock	Nov 2025
HubSpot + XFunnel	Acquisition agreed	Not disclosed	HubSpot	2025-10-31
Bluefish	Series A	$20M	NEA	2025-08-20
Evertune	Series A	$15M	Felicis	2025-08-12
Scrunch	Series A	$15M	Decibel	2025-07-22
Peec AI	Seed	€5.2M	20VC	2025-07-02
AthenaHQ	Launch round	$2.2M	No lead named (Y Combinator among investors)	2025-06-17

The pattern is consolidation at the top. Sitecore bought Scrunch, HubSpot agreed to buy XFunnel, and Adobe bought the largest SEO suite, Semrush. Meanwhile Peec, which TNW reported in June 2026 was in talks to raise at a $200 million pre-money valuation, had not announced a close as of 2026-10-16.

Link strength: what the numbers say, and what they do not

Our April posts ranked GEO platforms by "domain authority". That framing overreached. Domain Authority (Moz), Domain Rating (Ahrefs) and DataForSEO's rank are third-party estimates of how strongly a website is linked from other websites. DataForSEO describes its rank as "calculated based on the method for node ranking in a linked database", on a 0 to 1,000 scale driven by referring domains. No AI platform documents using any of these scores, and nothing shows a higher one gets a brand cited.

So read the table below as one thing only: how established each vendor's own website is in SEO terms. That can tell you something about a vendor's marketing maturity. It tells you nothing about the quality of its data.

Platform	Domain	Rank, Apr 2026	Rank, Oct 2026
Peec AI	peec.ai	264	537
Otterly.AI	otterly.ai	413	432
Promptwatch	promptwatch.com	not measured*	402
Profound	tryprofound.com	361	378
AirOps	airops.com	329	346
Scrunch	scrunch.com	280	317
Rankscale	rankscale.ai	343	313
LLMrefs	llmrefs.com	241	300
AthenaHQ	athenahq.ai	223	296
Gauge	withgauge.com	not measured*	293
Goodie AI	higoodie.com	not measured*	288
Evertune	evertune.ai	212	264
Bluefish	bluefishai.com	not measured*	250
99Visibility	99visibility.com	0	75

Source: DataForSEO Backlinks API, bulk ranks endpoint, 0 to 1,000 scale; April figures from our study pulled 2026-04-08, October figures pulled 2026-10-16. DataForSEO can recalibrate between pulls, so treat changes as rough. For scale, the SEO suites sit far higher: HubSpot 683, Semrush 612, Ahrefs 609, Similarweb 590.

*A correction we owe readers: in April we measured the wrong domain for four vendors (gauge.co, bluefish.ai, goodie.ai and promptwatch.io instead of withgauge.com, bluefishai.com, higoodie.com and promptwatch.com). That is why Gauge appeared at 0 and Goodie at 47. Those April figures are withdrawn.

Does funding buy link strength?

Not in this group. Profound has raised more than ten times what Peec has and sits about 160 points below it. Bluefish, the second-best-funded, has the weakest profile of the funded vendors. Otterly, with no disclosed round, is second. With roughly a dozen companies this is a description, not a correlation study, and link strength is not what any buyer should be choosing on.

Head-to-head: the comparisons buyers search for

No independent test compares these tools' measurements against ground truth, so nobody can honestly tell you which one is "better" on data quality. What you can compare is who each is built for, what it costs, what it covers and how it is funded. All figures are as of 2026-10-16.

Bluefish vs Gauge

Bluefish is an enterprise "agentic marketing platform" from New York, $68 million raised, sold by demo, and covers retail assistants such as Amazon's Rufus as well as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. Gauge is a small Y Combinator company (Summer 2024; YC lists a team of five) with a self-serve Growth plan at $599 a month covering ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Pick Bluefish for a large brand team that needs retail AI covered; pick Gauge if you want to start without a sales call.

Promptwatch vs Bluefish

Promptwatch, from Amsterdam (€6M seed), is self-serve: a free Explore tier, then Essential at $95 a month tracking 4 models, with up to 11 models listed including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta's Llama. Bluefish is enterprise and demo-only. The split is price transparency and buyer size, not a measured difference in accuracy.

Gauge vs Otterly

Otterly's Lite plan is $29 a month for 15 prompts; Gauge starts at $599. Otterly has no disclosed venture round, a stronger link profile (432 against 293) and more brand searches (880 against 260). For a small team testing whether AI mentions it at all, Otterly is the cheaper starting point.

Gauge vs Evertune

Evertune (New York, $15M Series A led by Felicis) publishes its prices: a self-serve Starter at $60 a month billed annually, then Pro at $800 a month billed annually and custom Enterprise, as of October 2026. Gauge sells one self-serve plan at $599 a month billed monthly. The difference is annual commitment and what each plan covers, not demo versus card, so compare what is included before you compare price.

LLMrefs vs Gauge and Profound vs Gauge

LLMrefs' All in One plan is $79 a month with a 7-day trial and lists ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and Meta. That is a broader platform list than Gauge's Growth plan at about an eighth of the price. Profound sits at the other end: a $1.8 billion company whose pricing page lists a free trial for brands (ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews, 50 prompts a day for 7 days) and custom Enterprise pricing. Agencies can buy a self-serve Agency Growth plan, with client workspaces at $399 a month each (as of 2026-10-16).

For the cheaper end of the market, see our best GEO tools roundup, and for why enterprise tools land where they do, why GEO tools cost $300 a month. Our own side-by-sides: 99Visibility vs Profound, 99Visibility vs Peec AI, 99Visibility vs Otterly AI and 99Visibility vs Goodie AI.

How to choose a GEO platform: six questions to ask any vendor

Ask	Why it matters	A good answer
How is each AI platform read: API with search off, API with search on, or the live consumer interface?	Search-off answers show what the model remembers; search-on answers show what it retrieves today. They can differ completely.	A per-platform statement of the collection method.
Do you report a "rank" or "position" in AI answers?	There is no verified ranking to measure against.	Mentions, citations and descriptions, not a rank.
Do you check whether AI states our facts correctly?	Wrong pricing, founders or features cost more than a missing mention.	Answers compared with facts you supply, with each error flagged.
Do you check whether AI crawlers can reach our site?	OpenAI requires both robots.txt permission and a host or CDN that lets its crawler through.	Per-bot robots.txt results plus a firewall test.
Do you sell schema, llms.txt or "AI-friendly" rewrites as citation levers?	Ahrefs found adding schema "produced no major uplift in citations on any platform", and Google ignores llms.txt.	Honesty that these are unproven for AI.
What do prompts, platforms and seats cost at the volume we need?	Credit and prompt models make entry prices misleading.	A price for your real prompt count across the platforms you need.

Our own answers: 99Visibility queries ChatGPT and Claude through their APIs with web search off, Perplexity with search on, Gemini with Google Search grounding, and reads Google AI Overviews from the live results page. It compares answers with the brand facts you enter (hallucination detection) and evaluates robots.txt for 18 AI and search crawlers and requests your page as each one that has its own user agent. It does not report a rank.

For the bigger picture behind all of this, start with what GEO is and what the evidence supports.

Frequently asked questions

What is a GEO platform?

A GEO (generative engine optimization) platform is software that asks AI assistants about your brand or category and reports whether you are mentioned, cited and described correctly. Most also track competitors. Some add content tools, accuracy checks or crawler-access checks.

What is the best GEO platform?

There is no independent benchmark of GEO platforms' data quality, so "best" depends on your budget, the AI platforms you need and whether you want self-serve. Enterprise teams mostly buy Profound or Bluefish by demo; smaller teams start with self-serve tools such as Otterly, LLMrefs, Promptwatch or Rankscale. Ask every vendor the six questions above before you sign.

How much funding has Profound raised?

Profound has announced $334.5 million across five rounds: a $3.5M seed (2024), a $20M Series A, a $35M Series B (both 2025), a $96M Series C at a $1 billion valuation (February 2026) and a $180M Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation (September 2026). The Series D was co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins.

Does a GEO vendor's domain authority affect AI citations?

No evidence says so. Domain Authority, Domain Rating and similar scores are third-party estimates of link strength, and no AI platform documents using them. We report them only as a rough measure of how established a vendor's website is.

Is SEO replaced by GEO?

No. Google says there are "no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary" beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. GEO platforms measure a new surface; they do not replace the search work underneath it.

To see what five AI platforms say about your brand today, with wrong facts and crawler blocks flagged, compare the plans on our pricing page.