With the rising reliance on AI chatbots like ChatGPT for online inquiries, businesses must adapt their digital strategies accordingly. Scrunch AI aims to assist enterprises in preparing for an environment where AI bots outnumber human visitors to their websites.
According to Scrunch AI, their platform enables companies to assess and enhance their visibility across various AI search engines, providing insights into AI crawlers’ interactions with their digital content. The system refreshes every three days, allowing businesses to understand how their data appears in AI search outcomes based on various demographic user prompts.
Chris Andrew, co-founder and CEO of Scrunch (shown above, on the right), noted that the platform assists companies in identifying information inconsistencies and gaps. For instance, it can reveal that an AI search engine pulled outdated pricing details from their website, enabling firms to either update or remove that information to enhance search results.
Andrew, who previously served as chief product officer at Hearsay Systems, was inspired to create Scrunch AI when he began noticing changes in his own online habits.
“I found myself visiting fewer websites,” Andrew shared. “I preferred getting answers directly from ChatGPT rather than sifting through 20 Google links. This made me realize that the first aspect of online behavior being outsourced to AI agents and crawlers is browsing. Since browsing is inherently inefficient, it suggests a significant shift in the customer journey ahead.”
He presented his idea to several chief marketing officers he had collaborated with, only to discover that they were witnessing a surge in high-quality referral traffic from AI-driven search engines. However, he pointed out that identical prompts often yield varied results across different AI platforms.
“Your program is no longer defined solely by you,” Andrew stated. “It’s what you declare, integrated with contributions from third parties and competitors. Therefore, it’s essential to have scaled monitoring and visibility in such a context.”
Andrew officially launched Scrunch AI in the fall of 2023 alongside co-founder and CTO Robert MacCloy (pictured above, on the left) and introduced the product in November 2024. Currently, the company has secured 25 clients, including organizations like Lenovo, BairesDev, and Penn State University.
Recently, Scrunch AI raised $4 million in a seed funding round, led by Mayfield, along with several angel investors such as Clara Shih, the co-founder and former CEO of Hearsay Systems; TJ Parker, co-founder of PillPack; and Bryant Chou, co-founder of Webflow. The company intends to allocate these funds towards ongoing product development.
However, Scrunch AI is not alone in recognizing the potential for assisting businesses in adapting to AI search dynamics. Profound aims to aid companies in tracking their SEO performance through a suite of dashboards that allow brands to input prompts and monitor various outcomes, having also raised $3.5 million in venture capital.
More traditional marketing and PR firms, such as Avenue Z, have also begun to promote their ability to enhance companies’ visibility in AI search results. This sector is certainly poised for further growth.
Andrew believes that Scrunch AI distinguishes itself by concentrating on the entire customer journey rather than solely on initial search visibility. He argues that the company is going beyond just catering to search results generated by humans through AI search engines, and instead addressing how AI agents perform searches.
“Many were asking, ‘How can we utilize AI to improve our website?’ My perspective was that ‘Your website will need to cater to an agent or crawler in the future,’” Andrew remarked. “This notion is becoming apparent among our enterprise-level clientele, with the realization that a brand is now defined not just by one’s statements, but also by what ChatGPT, Gemini, Siri, and Google AI Overviews say about it.”
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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