Gushwork bets on AI search for customer leads — and early results are emerging

While AI-powered search tools are changing the way businesses are discovered online, says the India-founded startup Gush work helps companies acquire customers through platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity – with early traction starting to attract 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 after the Lightspeed-led $2.1 million pre-seed in July 2023, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The latest funding 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 summaries and other conversational features in their search products. Gushwork is betting that this shift will create a new opportunity to help companies emerge 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 shifting its focus to search marketing after seeing strong customer demand for help improving online visibility.

“When we started, we were focused on helping companies outsource faster and better,” Bhattacharya told TechCrunch in an interview, adding that the pull-around search from customers was becoming increasingly difficult 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 approximately 200 to 300 partner websites; and track incoming leads through an integrated content management system. The goal, Bhattacharya said, is to help companies appear 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 – about 95% of them in the US – with plans starting at $800 per month. Gushwork is currently running on about $1.5 million in annualized recurring revenue after rolling out its AI search-focused product about three months ago and is targeting an ARR of $3 million to $3.5 million in the next three months, Bhattacharya said, adding that the startup is growing at about 50% to 80% monthly.

Within Gushwork’s customer base, about 20% of website traffic now comes from AI-powered search and chat platforms, but these sources account for about 40% of inbound leads, Bhattacharya said, citing the startup’s internal data.

The higher purpose leads, Bhattacharya said, are already translating into business results for some customers. In one case, a professional services firm signed contracts worth between $200,000 and $350,000 after acquiring the platform, he said, declining to release the client’s name. He added that many users are seeing meaningful pipeline growth as AI-driven discoveries continue to gain traction.

Gushwork’s customer base today is concentrated among high-priced B2B service providers, industrial distributors and contract manufacturers, mainly in the US, Bhattacharya said. The startup’s average subscription is about $800 to $900 per month, or about $9,000 to $10,000 in annual contract value, he added.

The shift to AI-driven discovery is still in its early stages, but gaining momentum. Tools such as generative AI chatbots and AI web browsers are increasingly used by buyers to research suppliers and products. OpenAI said in July 2025 that ChatGPT received about 2.5 billion prompts per day globally, including about 330 million from US users. Bhattacharya said the trend is starting to change the way some companies 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 added that the startup has more than 800 companies on its waiting list planning to come on board.

The startup, headquartered in Delaware with an office in Bengaluru, has around 70 employees in India, along with several contractors.