Athena, a startup focused on AI-driven search visibility, has launched from stealth with $2.2 million in funding. The round included backing from Y Combinator, FCVC, Red Bike Capital, Amino Capital, and several veterans from the search and SEO space, including Eli Schwartz and Ashley Stirrup.

The company is building what it calls a generative engine optimisation (GEO) platform. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on helping content rank in search engines like Google, GEO is focused on improving how brands appear in AI-generated responses — the kind people get from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Google’s AI Overviews.

Athena’s timing reflects a shift already playing out across consumer and business behaviour. As people turn to AI chatbots to ask questions, compare products, or research services, older SEO strategies aren’t always keeping up. Athena’s goal is to give businesses a way to track and improve how they show up in this new search environment.

“We’re in the middle of a major transition,” said Andrew Yan, Athena’s CEO and co-founder, in an interview with Marketing Tech News. “Traditional SEO isn’t dead, but its role is shrinking fast, especially for top-of-funnel discovery. AI chatbots are becoming the default way people search for products, services, and ideas. Brands can’t afford to rely solely on Google rankings anymore. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is now essential if you want to be visible where users are actually asking questions.”

The funding will go toward scaling the platform, expanding its dataset, and building tools for SaaS, ecommerce, and other sectors that depend on organic discovery. The platform is already being used by more than 80 companies, including Coupons.com, Checkr, Artisan, and Ollie.

Athena works by analysing millions of responses from large language models and mapping them to more than 300,000 websites that are frequently cited by these systems. Based on this data, it provides detailed recommendations — such as updating the structure of a website, revising how information is presented, or adjusting the type of content being published — to help brands increase how often and how favorably they are mentioned by chatbots.

“Visibility in AI chat isn’t about ranking at the top of page one,” said Yan. “It’s about how often, how early, and how favourably your brand is mentioned in responses. It’s not always consistent across models, which is why measurement is key. Athena tracks millions of real responses across platforms to surface which prompts trigger your brand, which don’t, and what you can do to improve that. It turns something vague into something quantifiable and actionable.”

Yan said that while some brands are already adapting to this shift, most are not. Even companies that dominate on traditional search engines often fail to appear in chatbot responses — not because they lack content, but because their existing content isn’t built in a way that language models can understand or cite.

“Most brands aren’t showing up at all,” Yan said. “Even major companies that dominate on Google are missing in chatbot responses because their content isn’t structured in a way LLMs can understand or cite. We’ve seen brands get outranked by competitors with much smaller web presence just because those competitors are optimising for LLMs. There’s a huge first-mover advantage right now.”

Athena’s platform is intended to help businesses close that gap — but Yan is quick to say that GEO isn’t a shortcut or replacement for good content. While GEO can identify where a brand is absent and suggest fixes, it still takes time for those changes to show up in chatbot behaviour.

“The biggest blind spot is assuming that what works for traditional SEO will work for LLMs,” Yan said. “These models aren’t ranking pages, they’re predicting helpful responses. That means optimising for structure, clarity, and credibility, not just keywords. There’s also a lag between making a change and seeing it reflected in model behaviour. GEO isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s quickly becoming a core part of how brands control their digital presence.”

That lag is one reason Athena focuses on measurement. By tracking which prompts do or don’t surface a brand, the platform gives companies a clearer idea of how they are performing across different AI systems — and where they need to adjust.

Yan said the strategy should also be shaped by the type of business. “SaaS companies, for example, need to focus on use-case prompts and decision-stage queries — things like ‘best tools for onboarding remote teams,’” he said. “Ecommerce brands need to optimise for product mentions, comparisons, and reviews. Publishers need to ensure their reporting gets cited as authoritative. One size doesn’t fit all, which is why Athena’s recommendations are tailored to each industry’s most valuable prompts.”

While the space is still relatively new, competition is already picking up. As more companies begin to experiment with GEO, visibility is expected to get harder — just as it did with traditional SEO.

“Yes, it’s already heading that way,” Yan said. “Early movers are seeing huge gains, but as more brands wake up to GEO, competition will increase and the bar will rise. That’s why we built Athena to give companies a clear, fast way to measure their current standing and take action before this space gets saturated. The window for outsized impact is now.”

Eli Schwartz, an angel investor and long-time SEO advisor, said the shift to AI search could reshape how billions in online spending is influenced. “Over the next decade, AI search will unlock billions in B2B and consumer spending, and Athena’s platform gives brands the precision and speed they need to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity,” he said.

Ashley Stirrup, former CMO of Talend and search firm Algolia, added that visibility in generative platforms is already affecting web traffic. “ChatGPT and AI Overviews are massively disrupting organic web traffic,” he said. “AthenaHQ helps companies identify the prompts that matter and grow their share of voice in this new search environment.”

Athena was founded by Andrew Yan and Alan Yao, both of whom have deep backgrounds in AI and search. Yan previously worked on information acquisition at Google Search. Yao built AI tools at ServiceNow and has been working with OpenAI’s platform since before ChatGPT’s public release. Their team includes engineers and advisors from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.

With AI-driven discovery accelerating and LLMs playing a growing role in how people get answers, Athena is betting that GEO will become a standard part of every brand’s strategy — not just a niche experiment.

(Photo by sarah b)

See also: Why marketers are rethinking SEO, ad buying, and data use