Gushwork’s bet on AI search leads to customers – and the early results are showing

As AI-powered search tools reshape the way businesses are found online, India-based startup Gushwork is helping companies capture customers on platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — with early operations that are starting to attract investors.

The two-year-old startup said Thursday it 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, up from $7.5 million following its Lightspeed-led $2.1 million seed round in July 2023, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The latest funding brings Gushwork’s total funding to $11 million, the startups said.

The funding comes as AI companies including OpenAI and Perplexity begin to pull away from traditional web search, prompting incumbents like Google to roll out AI-powered overviews and other conversational features across their search products. Gushwork is betting that this change will create a new opportunity to help businesses emerge from AI-driven acquisition channels using their automated sales agents.

Founded in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya (pictured above, right) and Adithya Venkatesh (pictured above, left), Gushwork initially focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses roll out workflows using a mix of AI and human experience. The startup began narrowing its focus on search-driven marketing after seeing strong customer demand for help improving online visibility.

“When we started, we were focused on helping businesses deploy services faster and deploy better,” Bhattacharya told TechCrunch in an interview, adding that the search pull from customers has become too hard to ignore.

The Gushwork 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 approximately 200 to 300 partner websites, and track incoming leads through an integrated content management system. The goal, Bhattacharya said, is to help businesses appear in both traditional search results and AI-generated responses without relying on large in-house marketing teams.

The startup says it has signed up more than 300 paying customers — about 95% of them in the US — with subscriptions starting at $800 a month. Gushwork is currently running on about $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue after rolling out its AI search-focused product about three months ago and is looking at $3 million to $3.5 million in ARR in the next three months, Bhattacharya said, adding that the startup is growing about 50% to 80% month-on-month.

Across Gushwork’s client base, about 20% of website traffic now comes from AI-driven search engines, but those sources account for about 40% of incoming leads, Bhattacharya said, citing the startup’s internal data.

Leads with high intent, says Bhattacharya, are already translating into business results for some clients. In one case, a professional services client closed contracts worth between $200,000 and $350,000 after accepting the platform, he said, declining to disclose the client’s name. He added that many users are seeing logical pipeline growth as AI-driven acquisitions gain momentum.

Gushwork’s customers today are focused on high-ticket B2B service providers, industrial distributors, and contract manufacturers, mostly in the US, Bhattacharya said. The average initial subscription runs about $800 to $900 a month, or about $9,000 to $10,000 of annual contract value, he added.

The shift to AI-driven discovery is still in its early stages but gaining momentum. Tools like artificial intelligence chatbots and AI web browsers are increasingly being used by consumers to research sellers and products. OpenAI said that by July 2025 ChatGPT received about 2.5 billion messages per day worldwide, including about 330 million from US users. Bhattacharya said this trend is starting to reshape the way some 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, Bhattacharya said. He also added that the startup has more than 800 businesses on the waiting list that he plans to start.

The startup, which is headquartered in Delaware with an office in Bengaluru, has about 70 employees in India, as well as several contractors.