In an era where artificial intelligence is swiftly eclipsing traditional search engines, a fresh startup, Search Party, emerges with ambitions to redefine how brands assert their presence in AI-driven discovery. The San Francisco-based company announced its public debut, backed by a $3.5 million seed round led by Fuse, a venture capital firm known for nurturing early-stage SaaS and AI innovators poised to reshape their industries.
The pivot from conventional search engines to AI-powered language models is no longer speculative. Recent data indicates that nearly 50% of consumers now prefer AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity over Google for answers and discovery. Against this backdrop, Search Party offers brands a powerful solution: full transparency and control over how their content is represented in AI-generated responses.
Unlike earlier tools that merely track visibility, Search Party dives deeper. The platform maps the origin of AI-generated answers, revealing which sources inform the AI’s narrative about a brand. More impressively, it triggers autonomous workflows—strategic content creation and optimization designed to influence these source signals directly.
“AI models respond to the signals we feed them,” explains Ryan Brown, CTO and co-founder. “We give brands the technical visibility to see which sources shape those signals and the tools to influence them. Because if you don’t write the story, someone else will.”
Complementing this is Search Party’s granular prompt-level analytics. Brands can archive unlimited queries, benchmark themselves against competitors, and convert these insights into actionable strategies to enhance how language models portray their identity and products.
“You aren’t just marketing to people anymore,” asserts Brandon Brown, CEO and co-founder. “You’re marketing to AI, and AI is marketing to people. That means you need to show up in the places AI trusts and present your content in a way it understands. That’s what Search Party is built for.”
The Brown brothers bring formidable credentials to this endeavor, having co-founded GRIN, a creator management platform that attained unicorn status under Brandon’s leadership. GRIN grew from inception to a $1 billion valuation, raising $145 million across seven funding rounds, while scaling its workforce from two to 480 employees. Ryan, meanwhile, led GRIN’s engineering efforts, solidifying its dominance in influencer marketing software.
Brendan Wales, General Partner at Fuse VC, underscores the opportunity: “Brandon and Ryan have already proven their ability to build category-defining companies, and we believe Search Party is poised to do the same in the new era of generative search. As AI rapidly reshapes how people discover and trust information, brands need purpose-built solutions to understand and influence how they appear. Fuse is excited to back the team and their vision for putting companies in control of their AI visibility.”
With two decades of combined leadership experience, the Browns are steering Search Party into uncharted territory: the generative engine optimization (GEO) space, where AI-powered visibility becomes the battleground for brand relevance.
“By this time next year, AI will be the dominant discovery channel, yet most brands won’t even know how they show up,” Brandon Brown warns. “We built Search Party to help brands take back control.”
Search Party is now inviting early adopters to join its beta program, offering a chance to test-drive the platform free of charge and start shaping their AI visibility in this emerging landscape.
Editorial Insight
The rise of AI as the primary gateway to information fundamentally disrupts traditional marketing and SEO paradigms. With generative AI models synthesizing answers from a complex web of sources, the ability for brands to control their narrative—and by extension, their consumer perception—is no longer optional but essential. Search Party’s approach is timely and sophisticated: by demystifying the AI’s data inputs and enabling brands to proactively influence them, it empowers marketers with an unprecedented degree of control.
However, the challenge extends beyond technology. As AI models evolve, so too will the criteria they use to weigh information sources, demanding continuous adaptation from brands and their partners. The opportunity for early movers is significant: mastering GEO could unlock direct, authoritative channels to consumers via AI, bypassing traditional search engines and even social platforms.
Search Party’s founders, with their proven track record at GRIN, bring a rare blend of operational scale and deep technical expertise that bodes well for the startup’s potential to lead this nascent industry. Yet, as AI visibility becomes a high-stakes arena, Search Party will face competition not only from emerging GEO startups but also from established SEO and digital marketing players pivoting toward AI strategies.
For brands seeking to maintain relevance and trust in this new discovery ecosystem, Search Party offers a critical toolset—one designed not just for visibility but for influence in a world where AI increasingly writes the first draft of consumer understanding.
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