Searchable secures funding to capture AI assistant traffic for brands via co-pilots
This article covers Searchable, an AI startup, which has raised £10.5m in a growth funding round at a £63.8m valuation to expand its product and enter the US and UK markets. The funding is intended to accelerate development of its execution engine and to help brands and marketers capture and convert AI-driven search traffic.
Searchable, an AI startup, has raised £10.5m in a growth funding round at a £63.8m valuation to expand its product and push into US and UK markets as AI reshapes how customers search and buy.
Why it matters
AI-generated answers and assistant-driven discovery are changing online visibility. Searchable positions itself as a tool for brands to capture traffic that no longer goes through traditional click-based search. Industry figures cited by the company — including that AI overviews now appear in roughly half of Google searches and that about 65 percent of searches end without a click — underline why marketers and CMOs are reassessing how they measure and win organic demand.
The funding round, led by Headline, reflects renewed investor interest in companies building infrastructure for AI search. It also follows a prior December 2025 round led by Freestyle, signalling continued venture support for the category.
Inside the product
Searchable describes its platform as an execution-focused system rather than a pure analytics tool. The company says it operates like an agentic co‑pilot trained on a brand, with 40 specific SEO and GEO skills designed to automate audits, content optimisation and technical fixes across AI search platforms.
Key reported metrics from the company include £75k in monthly recurring revenue, an annual recurring revenue run rate of about £1.9m, more than 500 paying customers acquired in a 60‑day window, and five enterprise migrations from legacy SEO tools. Typical enterprise customers listed include American Express, KPMG, Siemens, Tencent, Pfizer, Boston Consulting Group, DigitalOcean, VaynerMedia and Havas. Searchable also reports an average 22 percent increase in AI-driven traffic within the first 60 days for enterprise-scale customers and claims customers convert at roughly 3x higher rates when they arrive via large language model assistants.
The business is incorporated in Delaware and operates between New York and London. The company says the new capital will be used to accelerate development of its execution engine.
Who are the investors?
Headline led the round, taking a majority of the public attention around the deal. Headline is a global venture firm whose portfolio includes companies such as Bumble, Farfetch and Sonos, and it has previously backed category names in search and marketing software.
The company disclosed a £3m round led by Freestyle in December 2025 as the previous external financing event. Searchable said the latest funding values the business at £63.8m.
In the announcement, Dominic R. Wilhelm, Partner at Headline, said:
AI‑driven discovery is rewriting how customers find products, and the economics are moving fast. As more searches are answered directly by AI, brands that are invisible in this layer of search will simply see less demand. The companies that adapt first will protect and grow market share; those that don’t will lose it quietly. In the announcement, Dominic R. Wilhelm, Partner at Headline, said: We backed Semrush early as the category leader and exited following its IPO at around a £1.5bn ($2B) market cap. Now, we see a new generation of businesses coming up and Searchable is primed to win this market, which is why we are ecstatic to lead the current round. In the announcement, Dominic R. Wilhelm, Partner at Headline, said: We see Searchable becoming part of the core infrastructure for this shift, not just reporting on what AI engines say about a brand, but directly improving the visibility and revenue outcomes that matter to management teams and boards.
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Founder perspective
The company was founded by Chris Donnelly, a serial entrepreneur who previously sold SEO agency Verb and helped scale Lottie.Org to a large valuation. Donnelly frames the business as a response to an industry shift from manual SEO work towards automation and direct optimisation for AI-driven discovery.
In the announcement, Chris Donnelly, founder of Searchable, said:
Search is going through a once‑in‑a‑generation reset. When an AI assistant recommends your brand, customers arrive with more intent, more trust and a shorter path to purchase. Based on our own data customers are converting at 3x higher when they arrive from ChatGPT and other LLMs. If you aren’t visible in those answers, you’re giving ground to competitors every day. In the announcement, Chris Donnelly, founder of Searchable, said: For more than a decade, SEO has been labour‑intensive and expensive. Over the next two years, a large share of that work becomes automatable. Our goal is to give companies an execution layer for AI search that cuts operational SEO costs by up to 40 percent while growing high‑intent traffic. Donnelly sets out three expected structural shifts over the next 12 to 24 months: automation of repetitive SEO tasks via agentic systems, the rise of AI commerce as an optimisation layer, and the convergence of paid and organic AI visibility into unified attribution models.
The bigger picture
Searchable’s round illustrates how investors are looking beyond monitoring tools to platforms that claim to automate the work needed to improve visibility in AI search layers. For UK and European startups working in AI and marketing tech, the deal reinforces that venture capital is still available for companies focused on adapting legacy marketing workflows to new generative and assistant-driven discovery models.
As AI assistants and generative overlays reshape discovery, firms that can demonstrate measurable revenue outcomes — not just visibility signals — are more likely to attract follow‑on funding and enterprise contracts. The Searchable round will be watched as an indicator of how quickly established marketing budgets shift toward AI-native acquisition channels.
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