According to a new report, U.S. shoppers are expected to shift from Google and traditional search engines to AI-driven assistants this holiday season, with retailers potentially seeing a 520% surge in traffic from AI chatbots in 2025 compared to this year. 

This changing behaviour is changing online discovery and forcing brands to adapt quickly.

Founded just four months ago by Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline, and Albert Punama, The Prompting Company is leveraging a marketing approach it calls Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), a method designed to ensure products appear in AI search responses and agent-driven browsing.

“Over the past year, most of the growth on websites has come from AI bots, not people,” said co-founder and CEO Chandra. “We’re already seeing developers ask AI tools for product recommendations inside their workflows, and we think people, over time, will be less involved in parts of the purchasing funnel.”

The company argues that the future of digital marketing will involve optimising for both humans and AI agents. As conversational systems begin to execute transactions on users’ behalf, brands may need to maintain separate, AI-focused websites, stripped of pop-ups, navigation menus, and marketing copy, to provide agents with structured, machine-readable information.

“Most businesses still design websites only for humans,” Chandra added. “But the fastest-growing segment of users on the internet today is AI agents and they need a completely different interface.”

The platform identifies what kinds of questions AI models are asking, especially those related to purchase intent, then creates thousands of structured, “AI-optimised” pages to ensure those models can access and cite brand information directly, even when the company’s main site doesn’t appear in traditional search rankings.

While search engine optimisation (SEO) remains relevant, The Prompting Company insists GEO will soon take precedence, as AI-generated results depend more on contextual relevance than keyword bidding or ranking positions.

“Imagine you’re a large e-commerce store. Users can buy items, make returns, compare products, or search for promotions. We help our customers expose those actions to AI agents. Right now, these agents aren’t yet clicking those options or accessing APIs directly, but we expect that to change in the coming months,” said Chandra. 

“Once that becomes widespread and attribution improves, we see a path toward more advertising- or conversion-driven models. For now, we’re focused on helping companies get discovered and recommended by AI.”

The company already lists Rippling, Rho, Motion, Vapi, Fondo, Kernel, and Traceloop among its clients and reportedly hosts around half a million pages for customers. Its client sites now attract double-digit millions in monthly traffic, with revenue generated through subscriptions based on the number of prompts tracked and hosted pages.

The three Indonesian-born founders previously co-created Typedream (YC W20), a website builder acquired by Beehiiv in June, and Cotter, a passwordless authentication tool acquired by Stytch. 

Their latest venture builds on that foundation, targeting the next phase of online discovery in the age of AI assistants.

Investors in the round include Peak XV Partners, Base10, Y Combinator, Firedrop, and several angel backers such as Logan Kilpatrick. The company also confirmed it is collaborating with NVIDIA to develop new AI search capabilities.

“If your product isn’t discovered or cited in ChatGPT, you’re ngmi,” said Arnav Sahu, partner at Peak XV Partners. “We’re thrilled to back The Prompting Company as they build the core infrastructure for product discovery—already powering Fortune 10 companies and fast-growing startups. Kevin, Michelle, and Albert are repeat YC founders, and they are awesome.”

The Prompting Company says the fresh capital will be used to expand its partnerships, strengthen its platform, and prepare for a future where AI-driven discovery changes how consumers interact with brands online.

With the investment, the firm is returning to its roots following years of challenges, including the collapse of FTX and a major structural overhaul.

The venture firm announced a $750 million fund for Series A startups and a $200 million fund dedicated to seed-stage ventures. 

Same sizes as the ones launched in 2021, the current fund is an intentional nod to stability after what many investors have described as one of Sequoia’s most challenging periods.

“Markets go up and down, but our strategy remains consistent. We’re always looking for outlier founders with ideas to build generational businesses,” said Bogomil Balkansky, partner at Sequoia’s early-stage investment team.

The firm’s current goal of early-stage investing seeks to capture promising startups before valuations spiral. With AI startup prices increasing to high levels, Sequoia wants to get in early, when ownership stakes are more meaningful and pricing is still grounded in potential rather than later.

This disciplined focus is a cultural and operational reset for the firm. After losing over $200 million in its failed investment in cryptocurrency exchange FTX and spinning off its India and China arms, now Peak XV Partners and HongShan, Sequoia has bolstered its focus on the U.S. and European markets. 

The firm’s internal restructuring aims to simplify decision-making and strengthen engagement with founders from the earliest stages of their journey.

“Our ambition has always been and continues to be to identify these founders as early as possible; to roll up our sleeves and be a very active participant in their company-building journey,” Balkansky added.

Sequoia’s recent portfolio choices show a strong tilt toward AI infrastructure and developer tools rather than purely consumer-facing products. 

Among its notable early investments are Xbow, focused on AI security testing; Traversal, a reliability engineering firm; and Reflection AI, an open-source alternative to DeepSeek. 

Sequoia’s introduction of Reflection AI to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang reportedly led to a $500 million investment from the chipmaker.

The firm’s earlier investments in Clay, Harvey, n8n, Sierra, and Temporal have also multiplied in value, further validating its early-entry strategy. 

Beyond capital, Sequoia continues to provide hands-on support, helping with executive recruitment, customer connections, and strategic partnerships.

While the firm’s name remains synonymous with success stories like Airbnb, Google, Nvidia, and Stripe, Sequoia is acutely aware that reputation alone cannot sustain its legacy. 

In its newly renovated headquarters, every investor has handwritten a reminder on the wall: “We are only as good as our next investment.”

This simple phrase encapsulates Sequoia’s renewed mindset, a blend of humility and conviction that even with AI exuberance, the firm’s value lies in its ability to spot the next transformative idea before anyone else. The new Sequoia Capital early-stage funds are just right on time.

The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and 885 Capital, alongside Y Combinator, 468 Capital, Pioneer Fund, and several high-profile angel investors, including Careem founder Mudassir Sheikha, Tabby founder Hosam Arab, and well-known content creator Khalid Al Ameri. It is one of the largest Series A raises for a fintech in the MENA region.

Co-founded by former McKinsey consultants Parthi Duraisamy and Karun Kurien, Alaan was built to address the inefficiencies plaguing finance teams across the region. 

Many companies still rely on outdated tools and fragmented processes, problems that Alaan aims to eliminate with full visibility, real-time control, and automation tailored for MENA markets.

Duraisamy, recalling his earlier frustrations with corporate expenses in the Middle East, explained: “I’d spend my weekends uploading receipts, reconciling every expense manually.” He said the company was designed to replace this “constant pain” with tools that work in the background, saving both time and effort.

Since its launch in 2022, Alaan has processed over 2.5 million transactions for more than 1,500 finance teams, including G42, Lulu Group, Careem, and Tabby. The platform claims to have saved finance teams over 1.5 million hours by automating tasks such as receipt matching, VAT extraction, and expense categorisation.

Early customer adoption has included major enterprises like UAE real estate developer Azizi, which centralised its spend processes across divisions, and GuestReady, which replaced shared corporate cards with Alaan’s virtual cards—allowing faster book closure and tighter spend control.

“Thanks to tools like Alaan الآن, automation and AI are not just buzzwords – they’re our superpower,” said Abhishek Tak, head of Finance at GuestReady.

The company’s AI agents now handle repetitive and error-prone processes, from flagging missing invoices to reviewing expenses against historical data. This focus on behind-the-scenes AI came after an early misstep, its initial customer-facing chatbot failed to gain traction, prompting the shift towards automation embedded in workflows.

Alaan’s profitability has been achieved with notable cost discipline. According to Duraisamy, the fintech spent $5 million to generate $10 million in revenue, a performance that has helped secure investor confidence.

“What really matters for a company at our stage is the fundamentals: how capital-efficient we are, how much revenue we generate, how strong our go-to-market motion is,” he said.

Regulatory approvals have been one of the biggest hurdles for the company, particularly in Saudi Arabia, where it only launched earlier this year after years of navigating licensing requirements. Since entering the market, Alaan says transaction volumes have doubled month-on-month for six consecutive months.

The fresh funding will be channelled into hiring across sales, compliance, and customer success, building AI-driven capabilities, and rolling out new products such as Bill Pay and Rewards Cards. These additions aim to give finance teams more control over spend and faster reconciliation, all within a single platform.

Duraisamy says the mission is focused on becoming the most trusted and widely used fintech in the region. “We’re building the finance infrastructure this region deserves. And as cliché as it sounds, we’re just getting started.”

The round was led by Balderton Capital, a repeat backer, with participation from high-profile investors including Founders Fund, Peak XV Partners, ExBorder Partners, COTU Ventures, and others. The capital injection will support Huspy’s move into Saudi Arabia and expand its footprint across key European cities.

For a startup operating in a sector weighed down by high interest rates and struggling valuations, this funding success is a notable vote of confidence. 

While companies like Opendoor and Compass have seen their momentum slow in the U.S., Huspy has managed to cut through the noise by identifying structural inefficiencies and turning them into scalable opportunities.

In five years, the company has grown from a Dubai-based solution to one of the most prevalent players in the UAE mortgage market, capturing 30% market share, including a 25% in Dubai alone. 

Its entry into Spain in 2022 has also shown commendable results, with the company now ranked among the top three real estate firms by transaction volume in Valencia, and reporting 20x year-on-year growth.

Jad Antoun, Huspy’s CEO and co-founder, built the company on lessons learned from the overly complex and manual mortgage system in the UAE. By partnering with banks and offering digital pre-approvals, Huspy reduced friction for both buyers and brokers. Speaking on the company’s expansion strategy, Antoun said:

“I think it’s going to be difficult for someone to compete on the mortgage product specifically across both markets. We’ve just been here longer, and in Spain, we have better efficiency.”

Instead of building traditional brokerages or holding inventory like iBuyers, Huspy runs a platform-based model that connects freelance agents with vetted property leads and provides them with digital tools, CRM systems, and integrated mortgage products. 

The result is a low-overhead operation, more Uber than Zillow, that allows Huspy to scale efficiently across multiple cities.

Rana Yared, general partner at Balderton Capital, noted the firm’s confidence in Huspy’s model, saying: “Huspy has built a repeatable and efficient playbook for city launches, and their pace of innovation — especially around AI tools for brokers and agents, continues to raise the bar for the entire industry.”

Huspy claims to have helped over 25,000 people buy homes, driven over $7 billion in transaction volume, and grown its revenue more than tenfold since 2022. Its monetisation relies on success fees and commissions from partner banks and agents.

With operations already running in six Spanish cities and plans to expand into over 10 more by the end of 2025, Huspy is chasing a bigger vision to dominate the real estate transaction and mortgage value chain across the Middle East and Europe, markets often underserved by tech-enabled solutions.

Deputy CEO Ziad Nassar is leading the company’s European expansion, while Antoun continues to anchor operations from the UAE.

Their strategy is to focus on cities where agent productivity is low but transaction volume is high, build strong partnerships with marketplaces and banks, and deploy digital tools to improve agent performance.