Today, we’re announcing our $3.6 million seed round, led by BoxGroup, Long Journey Ventures, Y Combinator, Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, and Phosphor Capital.
The opportunity
AI models are becoming an important influencer for many brands; however, many brands are unaware of what AI models are saying about them; fewer still know how to change it.
Gartner estimates that 50% of all buyers—and 80-90% of B2B buyers—consult an AI model before making a purchase. Even traditional Google searches now include an AI overview at the top.
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Consumers are increasingly reliant on AI outputs for information about a company’s products and services. However, companies have no control over what these models say about them—and models under-represent and misrepresent them all the time.
For example, Unusual works with Reducto, a document parsing platform. Despite working with a number of Fortune 10 enterprises, AI models used to describe Reducto as tool “best suited for AI-native startups.” This misperception of Reducto meant that AI models would fail to recommend them to, say, a Fortune 500 CTO. You can read the full Reducto case study here.
AI models have costly misperceptions about every brand. Every marketing team should know what AI models think about their brand, how AI talks about them, and how to influence it.
What we do
Unusual is the first AI marketing platform. We help companies with two related challenges:
Visibility—often referred to as AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). This is about getting mentioned when AI models answer relevant questions. It’s useful, and we do it well.
Brand Alignment—ensuring that AI models talk about your brand the same way you talk about your brand. This is the deeper problem most companies don’t even know they have. Models form conceptions (and misconceptions) about every company: Are you enterprise-ready or a startup tool? Are you premium or budget? Are you better for healthcare or finance? Each of these opinions influences when and how you get recommended.
Our typical customer sees their inbound leads from AI models increase roughly 40% per month. We work with marketing and growth teams at brands like Monarch Money, Reducto, and Popl. We also work with a number of agencies, like Axia PR and Meerkat Media, to enable AI Marketing services for their own clients.
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