Gushwork focuses on AI-powered search to generate customer leads as early traction builds

As AI-powered search tools change how businesses are discovered online, India-founded startup Gushwork is positioning itself to help companies win customers through platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — and says early traction is now translating into investor interest.

The two-year-old startup said Thursday that 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 post-money, up from roughly $7.5 million after its Lightspeed-led $2.1 million pre-seed in July 2023, according to a person familiar with the matter. With this raise, Gushwork’s total funding reaches $11 million, the company said.

The financing comes as AI companies, including OpenAI and Perplexity, continue to erode the dominance of traditional web search, pushing incumbents like Google to introduce AI-generated overviews and other conversational experiences within their search products. Gushwork is betting that this shift opens a new lane for helping businesses show up in AI-first discovery channels, using what it describes as automated marketing agents.

Founded in 2023 by Nayrhit Bhattacharya (pictured above, right) and Adithya Venkatesh (pictured above, left), Gushwork originally focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses outsource workflows using a blend of AI and human expertise. The company later narrowed its focus to search-led marketing after observing strong customer demand to improve online visibility.

“When we started, we were focused on helping businesses outsource faster and outsource better,” Bhattacharya said in an interview, adding that customer pull around search became difficult to ignore.

Gushwork’s platform relies on a network of AI agents to automatically create and refresh search-optimised content, generate backlinks—typically 10 to 20 per customer—through a network of about 200 to 300 partner websites, and track inbound leads via an integrated content management system. The idea, Bhattacharya said, is to help businesses appear in both standard search rankings and AI-generated answers without requiring large internal marketing teams.

The startup says it has onboarded more than 300 paying customers — around 95% located in the U.S. — with plans starting at $800 per month. Gushwork is currently at about $1.5 million in annualised recurring revenue after launching its AI search-focused product roughly three months ago, and it’s targeting $3 million to $3.5 million in ARR over the next three months, Bhattacharya said. He added that the business is growing roughly 50% to 80% month over month.

Across its customer base, Bhattacharya said about 20% of website traffic now comes from AI-driven search and chat platforms. Yet those sources generate about 40% of inbound leads, according to the startup’s internal data.

Bhattacharya said these higher-intent leads are already turning into tangible outcomes for some customers. In one example, he said a professional services client has closed between $200,000 and $350,000 in contracts after adopting the platform, though he declined to name the customer. He added that many customers are seeing meaningful growth in their sales pipeline as AI-driven discovery continues to expand.

Gushwork’s customers today are largely high-ticket B2B service providers, industrial distributors, and contract manufacturers, primarily in the United States, Bhattacharya said. The company’s average subscription is about $800 to $900 per month, or roughly $9,000 to $10,000 in annual contract value, he added.

The move toward AI-powered discovery is still early, but the pace is picking up. Tools such as generative AI chatbots and AI-enabled web browsers are increasingly being used by buyers to research vendors and products. OpenAIreportedd in July 2025 that ChatGPT received about 2.5 billion prompts per day globally, including roughly 330 million from U.S. users. Bhattacharya said this trend is beginning to influence how businesses think about online visibility.

Gushwork plans to use the new capital to grow its engineering team, improve model accuracy, and scale its go-to-market strategy, Bhattacharya said. He added that the startup has more than 800 businesses on its waitlist and plans to begin onboarding them.

The company is headquartered in Delaware and also has an office in Bengaluru. It has about 70 employees in India, along with several contractors.