AI Search Visibility: Peec doubles to $10M in just a few months

A quiet but significant growth story, step by step

Peec was born in Berlin with an idea that seemed niche: measuring how often, and in what way, brands are cited in AI-generated answers. The market, however, responded in a surprising way. According to sources cited by TechCrunch, the startup has more than doubled its annualized revenue in a few months, passing the $10 million mark.

This pace of growth is no accident. It coincides with the rapid spread of tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot. These systems no longer return a list of links: they generate direct answers, citing sources and brands selectively. Consequently, a company's visibility no longer depends only on its Google ranking, but also on how often language models mention it.

Peec spotted this need before it went mainstream. That's why its trajectory says something bigger than one startup's story: it reflects a structural change in how consumers and B2B buyers look for information.

Winners and losers in the new AI search ecosystem

Who gains from Peec's growth? First of all, brands that have already invested in authoritative, well-structured, citable content. Language models tend to favor sources that look reliable, up to date and well organized. So companies with a solid editorial presence, such as blogs, white papers and detailed product pages, start with an edge.

On the other hand, SMEs that have neglected digital content are in a critical position. Not because they're actively penalized, but because they simply don't exist in the body of information AI models use to build their answers. This is a problem of invisibility, not penalization.

Among the potential losers are also SEO agencies and professionals who still measure success only through traditional metrics: Google rankings, organic traffic, CTR. These metrics are still relevant, but they're no longer enough. Just as with the shift from desktop to mobile, those who don't update their measurement tools risk optimizing for a channel that matters less and less.

Finally, the winners also include platforms that, like Peec, offer monitoring tools dedicated to AI search. The fact that a European startup has reached $10 million in ARR in this segment suggests that demand is real and growing fast.

SHM Studio's take: what's really changing

We at SHM Studio have been watching this closely for several months. Peec's growth confirms a thesis we've held for some time: optimizing for AI search, often called Answer Engine Optimization or AEO, is not a passing fad. It's an emerging discipline with solid foundations.

That said, it's important not to panic or overreact. Traditional SEO is not dead. Google also remains the main entry point for most commercial searches in Italy. The point isn't to replace one strategy with the other, but to combine them coherently.

What changes is the logic of visibility. In the past, appearing on the first page of search results was enough. Today, you also need to be cited in AI-generated answers. That makes content quality, meaning depth, structure and authority, even more decisive. Language models don't cite pages optimized for keywords: they cite sources that answer specific questions thoroughly.

According to research by Gartner, the volume of traditional searches could drop significantly by 2027-2028 because of the spread of AI chatbots. This shouldn't be read as a catastrophe, but as a sign that users' attention is being reallocated.

Work still in progress: what today's tools are missing

Peec's growth is impressive, but the AI search monitoring market is still being built. So it's worth understanding what these tools can do today and what they still can't measure accurately.

Today, monitoring platforms like Peec track how often a brand is mentioned in AI answers, the sentiment attached to those mentions, and which competitors are cited in comparisons. These are useful metrics, but partial ones. There's still no shared standard for measuring the impact of AI mentions on actual conversions. The link between AI search visibility and revenue remains hard to quantify.

On top of that, language models update their knowledge base in ways that aren't transparent. So a brand could be well positioned today and lose visibility tomorrow without any explicit signal. This opacity is one of the main challenges the industry has yet to solve.

As Harvard Business Review points out, trust in AI-generated content depends largely on the quality of the underlying sources. For this reason, investing in authoritative content is the most robust long-term strategy, regardless of which monitoring tools you use.

What it means in practice for Italian B2B and retail SMEs

So what should an Italian SME actually do in the face of these changes? The answer is not to rush out and buy an AI search monitoring tool. First, you need to build the right foundations.

The first step is an audit of your existing content. Do your site's pages thoroughly answer the questions buyers typically ask? Are they structured so a language model can pull clear information from them? If not, the problem isn't the lack of a monitoring tool: it's the lack of citable content. Our SEO copywriting team works at exactly this level.

Next, it makes sense to strengthen your presence on sources AI models tend to favor: Wikipedia, authoritative industry sites, indexed press releases, and mentions in recognized digital media. This process is often called digital PR and fits naturally with a well-structured SEO strategy.

For B2B companies, LinkedIn is also an increasingly relevant channel. Some AI models draw on public LinkedIn content to build answers about companies and professionals. So an active, consistent presence on the platform, through LinkedIn campaigns and organic content, indirectly contributes to AI search visibility.

Finally, for retail SMEs, the product page remains the fundamental unit. Detailed descriptions, complete technical specs, verified reviews: these are all elements language models use to build answers to purchase queries. A website optimized in this direction is the foundation of any future visibility strategy.

Next moves: three concrete priorities for the second half of 2026

Peec's growth shows the market is moving fast. But you don't need to react with disorganized urgency, and you shouldn't. There are three priorities Italian SMEs can tackle in a structured way over the coming months.

The first priority is mapping the AI queries that matter for your industry. What questions do potential customers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity before they buy? How does AI answer them? Does your brand show up in the answers? You can run this analysis without dedicated tools, simply by manually testing the most common queries. The AI strategy team at SHM Studio supports companies through this exploratory phase.

The second priority is producing structured content. In-depth articles, detailed FAQs, industry guides: these are the formats AI models cite most often. A digital marketing strategy that includes these formats boosts both traditional organic traffic and your visibility in AI search.

The third priority is gradual monitoring. You don't need to adopt a tool like Peec right away. Still, it's worth starting to manually track mentions of your brand in AI answers, at least monthly. This builds a data baseline that will be valuable when you decide to adopt more sophisticated tools.

To dig deeper into these topics or request an assessment of your digital presence, you can contact the SHM Studio team. You'll also find more resources and updates on our blog. Google Ads campaigns remain an effective complementary tool for staying visible during the shift to new search paradigms.