Gushwork bets on AI search for customer leads — ...

As AI-powered search instruments reshape how companies are found on-line, India-founded startup Gushwork helps firms seize prospects from platforms similar to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — with early traction that’s starting to attract investor help.

The 2-year-old startup mentioned Thursday it had raised $9 million in a seed spherical led by Susquehanna Worldwide Group (SIG) and Lightspeed, with participation from B Capital, Seaborne Capital, Beenext, Sparrow Capital, and a pair of.2 Capital. The spherical values Gushwork at $33 million post-money, up from about $7.5 million following its Lightspeed-led $2.1 million pre-seed in July 2023, an individual aware of the matter informed TechCrunch. The most recent financing brings Gushwork’s complete funding to $11 million, the startup mentioned.

The funding comes as AI firms, together with OpenAI and Perplexity, start to chip away at conventional net search, prompting incumbents like Google to roll out AI-generated overviews and different conversational features throughout their search merchandise. Gushwork is betting this shift will create a brand new alternative to assist companies floor in AI-driven discovery channels utilizing its automated advertising and marketing brokers.

Based in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya (pictured above, proper) and Adithya Venkatesh (pictured above, left), Gushwork initially centered on serving to small and medium companies outsource workflows utilizing a mixture of AI and human experience. The startup started narrowing its focus towards search-led advertising and marketing after seeing robust buyer demand for assist with bettering on-line visibility.

“After we began, we have been centered on serving to companies outsource sooner and outsource higher,” Bhattacharya informed TechCrunch in an interview, including that the pull round search from prospects turned more and more laborious to disregard.

Gushwork’s platform makes use of a community of AI brokers to robotically generate and replace search-optimized content material; construct backlinks — sometimes 10 to twenty per buyer — via a community of roughly 200 to 300 accomplice web sites; and observe inbound leads via an built-in content material administration system. The purpose, Bhattacharya mentioned, is to assist companies floor in each conventional search outcomes and AI-generated solutions with out counting on massive in-house advertising and marketing groups.

The startup says it has signed up greater than 300 paying prospects — roughly 95% of them within the U.S. — with subscriptions beginning at $800 per 30 days. Gushwork is at present working at about $1.5 million in annualized recurring income after rolling out its AI search-focused product round three months in the past and is focusing on $3 million to $3.5 million ARR within the subsequent three months, Bhattacharya mentioned, including that the startup is rising about 50% to 80% month over month.

Throughout Gushwork’s buyer base, about 20% of web site site visitors now comes from AI-driven search and chat platforms, however these sources account for round 40% of inbound leads, Bhattacharya mentioned, citing the startup’s inside knowledge.

The upper-intent leads, Bhattacharya mentioned, are already translating into enterprise outcomes for some prospects. In a single case, an expert providers consumer has closed between $200,000 and $350,000 price of contracts after adopting the platform, he mentioned, declining to reveal the client’s title. He added that many customers are seeing significant pipeline progress as AI-driven discovery features traction.

Gushwork’s buyer base at this time is concentrated amongst high-ticket B2B service suppliers, industrial distributors, and contract producers, primarily within the U.S., Bhattacharya mentioned. The startup’s common subscription runs about $800 to $900 per 30 days, or roughly $9,000 to $10,000 in annual contract worth, he added.

The shift towards AI-driven discovery remains to be in its early phases however is gaining momentum. Instruments similar to generative AI chatbots and AI net browsers are more and more being utilized by patrons to analysis distributors and merchandise. OpenAI mentioned in July 2025 that ChatGPT received about 2.5 billion prompts a day globally, together with roughly 330 million from U.S. customers. Bhattacharya mentioned the pattern is starting to reshape how some companies method on-line visibility.

Gushwork plans to make use of the brand new funding to develop its engineering staff, enhance mannequin accuracy, and scale its go-to-market efforts, Bhattacharya mentioned. He added that the startup has greater than 800 companies on its waitlist that it plans to start onboarding.

The startup, headquartered in Delaware with an workplace in Bengaluru, has about 70 staff in India, together with a number of contractors.