London-based AI search visibility start-up Azoma has raised £3 million in pre-Series A funding as it positions itself to help brands and retailers increase their visibility in the era of AI-powered shopping.
The company, which is pioneering generative engine optimisation (GEO) for e-commerce, secured investment from Ignite Ventures, Rank Ventures, eBay Ventures x Techstars, Twinpath, MaRS IAF, strategic angel investors from both retail and AI—including the chairman and CEO of The Winn-Dixie Company and senior leadership at Google DeepMind—and non-dilutive funding.
The news caps a period of rapid expansion for Azoma, including revenue growing to seven figures over the last 10 months and achieving profitability in Q2 2025.
Azoma’s end-to-end workflow platform is used by retailers to increase their share of visibility in the AI search era. The London and Toronto-based company already lists major brands such as Mars, Colgate, Zappos, P&G, Reckitt, Beiersdorf and Canadian Tire as existing customers.
Research shows that 74 per cent of consumers now use AI tools in their path to purchasing. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently reported that customers using its AI shopping assistant, Rufus, were 60 per cent more likely to purchase than using traditional search, claiming the chatbot would deliver “over $10 billion in incremental annualised sales”.
Max Sinclair, co-founder and CEO of Azoma, said:
“A thousand years ago, the average person owned around a dozen possessions. One hundred years ago, 99% of everything we brought was from a local merchant. Amazon has now been with us for three decades and the iPhone for just two. Currently, we are in the era of LLM-based commerce. In a year or two, most of our day-to-day shopping will be done by virtual AI Agents.”
“Azoma will be the partner of choice for the world’s most loved consumer brands through all of these changes to ensure they remain discoverable and dominant.”
Sinclair added that in five years or so, AI will be embedded directly physically into appliances from smart mirrors recommending skincare to smart toilets analysing biometrics to optimise diets.
Azoma’s commercial success is built on two crucial patents covering AI brand monitoring, which tracks how brands show up in chatbot answers, scores authority, predicts AI responses, and AI product content optimisation, which analyses e-commerce data and creates AI-optimised content with one-click publishing.
This patented approach allows Azoma to track how brands appear in AI responses across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Amazon Rufus, delivering improvements to visibility scores, sentiment and how frequently they are sourced by large language models. The platform also features a patented digital twin simulation that predicts AI responses before content is deployed.
John Spindler, general partner at Twinpath Ventures, said:
“Azoma’s unique combination of deep industry understanding and state-of-the-art AI has enabled their clients to adapt to the seismic change of LLM powered search. Now used by some of the world’s leading consumer brands, Azoma patented protected AI is enabling world leading customers to not only protect sometimes hundreds years of brand value but also to reach new customers.”
The funding comes as AI search attempts to carve itself out as the new standard for online browsing, impacting billions in industries like e-commerce. This has naturally led to a nascent but perhaps one day essential service of AI search optimisation, a follow-up to search engine optimisation (SEO) that has been so significant in the online age.
Earlier this week, a London start-up called Searchable secured a similarly sized investment off the promise of supporting visibility from AI searches.
Saumya Kowtha, investor at MaRS IAF, added:
“Azoma is a pioneer in the AI space, combining deep algorithmic expertise and a data-driven mindset. The team brings vision, energy, and imagination. Their commitment to continuous improvement and support for our business priorities are foundational to our partnership. We feel better equipped to take on AI. This funding milestone is testament to the extraordinary momentum they’re building.”
