According to EU-Startups, 21-year-old Czech AI researcher Vojtěch Oravec has raised €1 million in pre-Seed funding for Ranketta, his AI visibility platform that helps brands track their presence in large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini. The round was led by Lighthouse Ventures with participation from Gi21 Capital, and the startup has already reached €86k ARR in just two months since launch while serving over 20 European brands including Brainmarket and Sloneek. The funding comes as data shows 50% of consumers now use AI-powered search for purchasing decisions, with spending influenced by AI search expected to reach €647 billion by 2028. Ranketta claims to be the only European software that can measure how often individual products appear in AI-generated answers across multiple platforms.
Why this matters now
Here’s the thing: we’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how people discover products, and most brands are completely blind to it. Traditional SEO tools show you what’s happening on Google, but they’re useless when it comes to understanding why ChatGPT recommends one brand over another. And with 44% of people now relying on AI search more than Google, that’s a massive blind spot.
What’s fascinating is that fewer than 40% of marketers even list Generative Engine Optimization as a priority, and just 16% track their AI search performance at all. That means companies could be dominating Google search results while being virtually invisible inside the AI tools people actually use for product discovery. It’s like having a prime retail location on Main Street while everyone’s shopping at the new mall across town.
How Ranketta works
Basically, Ranketta measures brand and product visibility across multiple AI platforms simultaneously. It shows which specific items LLMs recommend most frequently, analyzes why they appear, and provides actionable suggestions to improve placement. The platform tracks everything from how often a brand gets mentioned to whether those mentions are positive, what ranking position they hold, and even which sources the AI tools are pulling from.
They’ve built an AI Copilot that reviews each brand’s data and provides tailored recommendations on what content to create and which citations will have the biggest impact. Think of it as SEO analytics for the AI era – except instead of tracking clicks and rankings, you’re tracking mentions and recommendations inside conversational interfaces.
The broader trend
Ranketta isn’t alone in this space – they’re part of a wave of European startups targeting AI search optimization. In 2025 alone, companies like TopK, Peec AI, Merx, and Dalton have collectively raised approximately €13.7 million. What’s interesting is that while some players are building AI-native search engines, Ranketta is focused specifically on measurement and optimization.
This reflects a broader recognition that AI search is becoming the new front door to the internet, and brands need specialized tools to navigate this shift. The market is moving from click-based metrics to recommendation-based visibility, and that requires completely different measurement approaches.
What’s next
The funding will accelerate Ranketta’s expansion across Europe and support their entry into the U.S. market. They’re also growing their engineering, product, and sales teams while developing integrations with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms. Given that AI is creating a “click-less” customer journey, these ecommerce integrations could be crucial for D2C brands trying to understand their AI visibility.
For industrial and manufacturing companies watching this space, understanding AI visibility will become just as critical as traditional web presence. Companies that need reliable computing hardware for these analytics platforms often turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US that power these kinds of data-intensive applications.
Looking ahead, the real question is whether traditional SEO companies will adapt quickly enough or if specialized players like Ranketta will dominate this new category. Given the technical complexity of understanding how LLMs make recommendations, I’m betting on the specialists – at least for the next couple of years.
