As AI-powered search tools reshape how businesses are discovered online, the India-founded startup Gushwork is helping companies capture customers from platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Its early traction is beginning to draw significant investor support.
The two-year-old startup recently raised $9 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by Susquehanna International Group and Lightspeed, with participation from B Capital, Seaborne Capital, Beenext, Sparrow Capital, and 2.2 Capital. This investment values Gushwork at $33 million post-money. That marks a substantial increase from its valuation of about $7.5 million following a Lightspeed-led $2.1 million pre-seed round in July 2023. The latest financing brings Gushwork’s total funding to $11 million.
This funding arrives as AI companies, including OpenAI and Perplexity, begin to chip away at traditional web search. This shift has prompted incumbents like Google to roll out AI-generated overviews and other conversational features across their search products. Gushwork is betting this change 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 and Adithya Venkatesh, 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. The founders noted that customer pull around search became increasingly hard to ignore.
Gushwork’s platform uses a network of AI agents to automatically generate and update search-optimized content, build backlinks through a network of partner websites, and track inbound leads through an integrated system. The goal is to help businesses appear in both traditional search results and AI-generated answers without needing large in-house marketing teams.
The startup says it has signed up more than 300 paying customers, with roughly 95 percent of them based in the United States. Subscriptions start at $800 per month. Gushwork is currently running at about $1.5 million in annualized recurring revenue after launching its AI search-focused product approximately three months ago. The company is targeting $3 million to $3.5 million in annual recurring revenue within the next three months and is growing about 50 to 80 percent month over month.
Across its customer base, about 20 percent of website traffic now comes from AI-driven search and chat platforms. However, those sources account for around 40 percent of inbound leads. The founders state these higher-intent leads are already translating into business outcomes. In one case, a professional services client closed between $200,000 and $350,000 worth of contracts after adopting the platform. Many users are seeing meaningful pipeline growth as AI-driven discovery gains traction.
Gushwork’s current customer base is concentrated among high-ticket B2B service providers, industrial distributors, and contract manufacturers, primarily in the U.S. The average subscription runs about $800 to $900 per month.
The shift toward AI-driven discovery is still early but gaining momentum. Tools like generative AI chatbots and AI web browsers are increasingly used by buyers to research vendors. Industry data shows the scale of this trend, with AI platforms processing billions of queries daily. This is beginning to reshape how businesses approach online visibility.
Gushwork plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering team, improve model accuracy, and scale its go-to-market efforts. The startup also has more than 800 businesses on its waitlist that it plans to begin onboarding.
Headquartered in Delaware with an office in Bengaluru, Gushwork has about 70 employees in India, along with several contractors.