India-founded startup Gushwork is betting that AI-powered search platforms will redefine how businesses attract customers, and early results are drawing investor attention.

The two-year-old company announced a $9 million seed round led by Susquehanna International Group and Lightspeed, valuing the startup at $33 million post-money.

The funding comes as AI tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity increasingly compete with traditional web search, prompting businesses to rethink online discovery strategies.

Gushwork positions itself as a bridge to this new landscape, using automated marketing agents to help companies appear in AI-generated answers as well as conventional search results.

Founded in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya and Adithya Venkatesh, the company initially focused on workflow outsourcing before pivoting toward search-led marketing in response to customer demand.

Its platform automates content creation, backlink generation, and lead tracking, reducing the need for large in-house marketing teams.

Gushwork says it has more than 300 paying customers mostly U.S.-based and is generating roughly $1.5 million in annualized recurring revenue, with rapid month growth.

The company plans to use the new capital to expand engineering, improve model accuracy, and onboard more than 800 businesses currently on its waitlist.

Source: TechCrunch