More people are turning to AI rather than Google to help them find products. According to a recent shopping survey, this holiday season, Americans are expected to rely on large language models to search for gifts, discounts, and sales, moving away from conventional search engines.
The report predicts that by 2025, retailers could experience as much as a 520% jump in visits coming from chatbots and AI-driven prompts compared to 2024. For brands, this means they must quickly learn how to appear in AI-generated suggestions.
This rapid growth in AI-driven visits is the foundation for The Prompting Company, a Y Combinator-supported startup that helps products get featured in AI applications through GEO (generative engine optimization)—a strategy built for a future where AI agents browse the web for users.
Founded just four months ago by Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline, and Albert Purnama, the startup has already secured $6.5 million in seed investment and counts companies like Rippling, Rho, Motion, Vapi, Fondo, Kernel, and Traceloop among its clients.
“In the last year, most website growth has come from AI bots instead of human visitors,” Chandra, the co-founder and CEO, shared with TechCrunch. “We’re already seeing developers use AI tools to get product suggestions during their work, and we believe people will gradually play a smaller role in parts of the buying process.”
As AI becomes the main entry point for discovering products and agents eventually handle transactions for users, The Prompting Company believes brands need to learn to market to both agents and people.
Chandra explains that brands will need a version of their website tailored for AI—one without navigation menus, pop-ups, or excessive marketing. “Most companies still design their sites for human users,” Chandra told TechCrunch. “But the fastest-growing group online now is AI agents, and they require a totally different interface.”
Here’s how the system operates: It first detects and examines the questions AI agents are asking by querying models to find purchase-related queries. Then, it generates structured content to answer those questions and directs AI agents to “AI-optimized pages.”
Backed by Y Combinator, the startup enables businesses to publish thousands of pages optimized for AI, so large language models can reference their answers even if they don’t appear in standard SEO rankings. (YC has also supported similar companies like Relixir, Writesonic, and Bear.)
While SEO remains important, Chandra believes that GEO is quickly becoming the main focus for brands. In GEO, product recommendations appear naturally based on their relevance to the conversation, not because of paid keywords or search engine rankings.
This transformation could also reshape how consumers shop. New protocols, such as Google’s Agent2Agent framework and OpenAI’s collaboration with Stripe, may speed up this trend by letting AI agents browse and complete purchases for users, taking them from discovery all the way to checkout.
“Picture a major online retailer. Shoppers can purchase items, return products, compare options, or look for deals. We help our clients make these actions accessible to AI agents. At the moment, these agents aren’t yet clicking those features or using APIs directly, but we anticipate that will change soon,” Chandra said. “Once this becomes common and tracking improves, we expect more advertising- or conversion-based business models. For now, our priority is helping companies get found and recommended by AI.”
Currently, The Prompting Company mainly serves clients in fintech, developer tools, and enterprise SaaS. The team also reports that a Fortune 10 company is using its platform, which now hosts around 500,000 pages.
Altogether, client sites receive tens of millions of AI-driven visits each month. The Prompting Company operates on a subscription basis, charging according to the number of prompts tracked and pages hosted.
The founders, who are Indonesian immigrants and met as college freshmen, previously created Typedream (YC W20), a Y Combinator-backed startup that enabled users to quickly build and launch websites with AI, before Lovable and other competitors emerged (Typedream was acquired by beehiiv last June). They also developed Cotter, a passwordless authentication SDK later acquired by Stytch.
With The Prompting Company, they aim to transform how people find and buy products in the age of AI. The seed funding, raised from Peak XV Partners, Base10, Y Combinator, Firedrop, and angel investors like Logan Kilpatrick, will support the company’s growth and partnerships as AI-powered discovery becomes a key distribution channel. The startup is also working with Nvidia on advanced AI search technology.
“If your product isn’t showing up or being referenced in ChatGPT, you’re ngmi,” said Arnav Sahu, a partner at Peak XV Partners. “We’re excited to support The Prompting Company as they build the essential infrastructure for product discovery—already serving Fortune 10 companies and rapidly growing startups. Kevin, Michelle, and Albert are experienced YC founders, and they’re outstanding.”
