Simaia, an AI-native GEO marketing service that helps companies get cited in AI search results, has raised a pre-seed round through acceptance into Iterative's S26 batch, following an earlier angel round. The company reports that customers across China, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the United States have seen inbound lead volume rise three-to-fivefold within two months of engagement, with a 90% retention rate and double-digit month-over-month growth.
Simaia operates as both the strategic brain and operational body of a marketing function. It audits how buyers search on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview, then writes and distributes content that gets brands cited inside those answers. Customers span manufacturers, suppliers, outsourcing firms, service companies, tech companies, fintech, real estate, and tour groups.
How the service works
The product splits into two functions delivered as one service. The analysis function scans a client's category across five major AI models, benchmarks the client against competitors, and produces a ranked list of the third-party sources those models trust most. The execution function then writes on-site blog content formatted for LLM extraction, places press releases with outlets AI models cite, and posts to channels each model favors, while pacing publishing volume against the client's Google Search Console data so new content doesn't cannibalize existing search rankings.
When an AI referral converts into a website visit, Simaia identifies the company, the individual contact, their email, phone number, and LinkedIn profile, and passes that record to the client's sales team. Plans start at $800 USD per month.
Why GEO matters now
The round comes as buyers increasingly research vendors through conversational AI rather than traditional search. Research published by ahrefs in early 2026 found AI Overviews reduced clicks to top-ranking content by 58% in some query categories, leaving companies that rely on trade exhibitions, outbound, SEO, and referral networks with no visibility into whether they appear in an AI-generated answer at all.
In one existing Simaia case study, a manufacturing client's inbound lead rate moved from one lead every three months to ten leads per month within two months of engagement. The shift is pushing marketing teams to treat AI citations as a distinct channel with its own mechanics, not an extension of traditional SEO. For professionals looking to build these skills, an AI Learning Path for SEO Specialists covers the overlap between conventional search optimization and AI-driven discovery.
"This round builds on traction we already had: double-digit growth month over month, customers seeing three to five times the leads within two months, and a ninety percent retention rate," said Ryan Wan, CEO and Co-Founder of Simaia. "Iterative's backing lets us keep that going across the six markets we already serve. We will be expanding to other markets too."
"We built Simaia so a founder or sales leader never has to learn how ChatGPT and other LLMs decides what to cite, they just see the leads show up," said Wan.
Why this matters for marketing professionals
Marketing teams that have invested heavily in SEO are now competing with AI models that summarize answers without clicking through to websites. Simaia's results - three-to-fivefold lead growth within two months - suggest that GEO work can produce faster returns than traditional content optimization, but only when the content strategy is built around what specific AI models trust. The practical takeaway: audit where your brand appears in AI answers across multiple models, identify which third-party sources those models cite in your category, and prioritize content placements with those sources over broad publishing. For marketing professionals, AI for Marketing resources offer a starting point for understanding how these systems evaluate and cite sources.
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