ChatGPT for small business: staying visible in AI assistants

Startup Pie helps small businesses stay visible in ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants, where a growing number of customers turn instead of Google. In July 2026, the company came out of stealth mode and raised $19.5 million in a Series A round.

Why AI search threatens local businesses

For thirty years, small business owners invested in Google promotion. They registered with Google Business Profile, collected reviews, and paid SEO specialists and for contextual advertising. The algorithm was not simple, but it was predictable: put in time and money, and you get a place in search results.

Now some consumers are moving to AI assistants. Instead of typing a query into Google and scrolling through a list of links, they ask ChatGPT or Gemini for an answer right away: which restaurant is the best in the area, whether there is a reliable plumber nearby, where to take a car for repairs. AI systems generate the answer on the spot, with no jump to a search page and no list of sites.

The problem is that generative models build their answers from data they saw during training and through search tools. If a hair salon, café or small office did not make it into the model's "picture of the world," it simply does not appear in answers. The customer goes to a competitor without ever knowing the first option existed.

What Pie offers

• Round: Series A, $19.5 million
• Headquarters: New York
• Exit from stealth: July 2026
• Target audience: small local businesses, including salons, restaurants and service companies
• Product: optimizing presence in AI search (AEO / GEO)

Pie has not yet revealed the details of how its product works: the company entered the market at the same time as it announced the round. Still, the premise has already been backed by investors' financial interest: almost $20 million on the idea that small businesses need an affordable tool for a new kind of promotion.

The industry calls this approach AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). It is analogous to classic SEO, but aims to get a business into the answers of AI systems, not just into a search index.

A new market with no ready-made solutions

Enterprise customers already work with agencies and SaaS products that help optimize content for generative models. Small businesses, thousands of salons, cafés, workshops and small offices, remain without affordable tools for now. That is the segment Pie is aiming at.

Whoever sets the standard here first will get a huge market: the US alone has tens of millions of small businesses, and most of them have not yet started thinking about how people find them not on Google, but in ChatGPT.

What this means

The shift of part of consumer search from Google to AI assistants creates a new point of vulnerability for small businesses, and a new market for those who can help close that gap. Pie is betting that the problem is already real and that no affordable solutions exist yet for the mass market.

Why does visibility in ChatGPT matter for small businesses?

More and more customers go there instead of Google. It is becoming the main channel for finding information in place of traditional search.

How did small businesses promote themselves in search before?

By registering with Google Business Profile, collecting reviews, and paying SEO specialists and for contextual advertising. The algorithm was predictable: put in time and money, and you get results.