Gushwork bets on AI search for customer leads — and early results are emerging

As AI-powered tools begin to alter online discovery, India-founded startup Gushwork has raised $9 million in a seed round to help businesses capture customers from platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. The round, led by Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Lightspeed, brings the company's total funding to $11 million and values it at $33 million post-money. The investment underscores a growing focus on a new marketing frontier where visibility within AI-generated answers is becoming as critical as ranking on traditional search engines.

Gushwork uses a network of AI agents to automate the generation of search-optimized content, build backlinks through a network of partner websites, and track leads via an integrated CMS. Founded in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya and Adithya Venkatesh, the company has pivoted from a general workflow outsourcing model to this specific marketing focus. With over 300 paying customers, primarily in the U.S., Gushwork reports annualized recurring revenue of approximately $1.5 million, achieved within three months of launching its AI search-focused product. Subscriptions start at around $800 per month for clients, who are mainly high-ticket B2B service providers and industrial distributors.

The company's internal data suggests that while AI-driven search currently accounts for about 20% of its customers' website traffic, it generates a disproportionately high 40% of their inbound leads, indicating higher user intent. One professional services client reportedly closed between $200,000 and $350,000 in new contracts after adopting the platform. Gushwork plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering team, enhance its model accuracy, and scale its go-to-market efforts to begin onboarding the more than 800 businesses on its waitlist.

Gushwork's funding and early traction signal the formal emergence of a new marketing discipline focused on optimizing for AI answer engines, a parallel to traditional SEO. As platforms like ChatGPT become primary discovery tools, the ability to surface within their generated responses will become a critical battleground for customer acquisition, particularly for high-value B2B services.