As AI-powered search tools reshape how businesses are discovered online, India-founded startup Gushwork is helping companies capture customers from platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — with early traction that is beginning to draw investor support.
The two-year-old startup said Thursday it had raised $9 million in a seed round led by Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Lightspeed, with participation from B Capital, Seaborne Capital, Beenext, Sparrow Capital, and 2.2 Capital. The round 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, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The latest financing brings Gushwork’s total funding to $11 million, the startup said.
The funding comes as AI companies including OpenAI and Perplexity begin to chip away at traditional web search, prompting incumbents like Google to roll out AI-generated overviews and other conversational features across their search products. Gushwork is betting this shift will create a new opportunity to help businesses surface in AI-driven discovery channels using its automated marketing agents.
Founded in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya (pictured above, right) and Adithya Venkatesh (pictured above, left), Gushwork initially focused on helping small and medium businesses outsource workflows using a mix of AI and human expertise. The startup began narrowing its focus toward search-led marketing after seeing strong customer demand for help with improving online visibility.
“When we started, we were focused on helping businesses outsource faster and outsource better,” Bhattacharya told TechCrunch in an interview, adding that the pull around search from customers became increasingly hard to ignore.
Gushwork’s platform uses a network of AI agents to automatically generate and update search-optimized content, build backlinks — typically 10 to 20 per customer — through a network of roughly 200 to 300 partner websites, and track inbound leads through an integrated content management system. The goal, Bhattacharya said, is to help businesses surface in both traditional search results and AI-generated answers without relying on large in-house marketing teams.
The startup says it has signed up more than 300 paying customers — roughly 95% of them in the U.S. — with subscriptions starting at $800 per month. Gushwork is currently running at about $1.5 million in annualized recurring revenue after rolling out its AI search-focused product around three months ago and is targeting $3 million to $3.5 million ARR in the next three months, Bhattacharya said, adding that the startup is growing about 50% to 80% month over month.
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