AI visibility startup Promptwatch raises €6m seed round
Promptwatch has secured €6m in seed funding to expand its AI search optimisation platform, signalling a rapid shift in corporate marketing spend away from traditional search engines.
Amsterdam-based Promptwatch has raised a €6m seed round led by Berlin’s Seed + Speed Ventures, with participation from Blum Ventures and Arches Capital. The startup provides generative engine optimisation (GEO) services, helping brands ensure they are cited by AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude.
The capital will fund a new office in New York as the company pushes into the US market. Promptwatch has scaled quickly since launching, reaching almost 2,000 users, including Duolingo and Fireflies. The company hit €2m in annual recurring revenue in May 2026, just 12 months after its inception.
For investors and corporate strategists, the funding underscores a structural shift in digital marketing budgets. As consumers increasingly turn to large language models for information, traditional search engine optimisation is losing its absolute dominance. Marketers are now urgently allocating capital to ensure their brands surface in opaque AI-generated answers, creating a fresh category of enterprise software.
Promptwatch operates in a consolidating but still fragmented market. "I think there are around 10 serious competitors for AI search globally," said cofounder and CEO Gijs de Groot. "In Europe, it's us and [Berlin-based] Peec." De Groot noted that Promptwatch’s 17-person team differentiates itself by not just tracking performance, but actively creating chatbot-friendly content for clients.
The underlying mechanics of AI search require companies to completely overhaul their content production pipelines. Unlike traditional search, where keyword tracking clearly mapped page visits, AI models synthesize answers from disparate web corners without offering transparent attribution data. This makes tracking return on investment significantly harder for marketing departments.
"The chatbots all pull from different places, whether that's Reddit or YouTube, so your company needs to show up in multiple places now," de Groot said.
This fragmentation demands a higher volume of fresh material. "It used to be that you could write one good blog post and it would keep showing up on Google for years," de Groot added. "Now, content has a much shorter shelf life."
Ironically, capturing this new AI-driven demand still requires some reliance on the old guard, as Promptwatch plans to spend part of its new capital on improving its own Google ranking.
