Sitecore Snaps Up GEO Startup Scrunch for an Alleged $225M

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Sitecore, an enterprise content and digital experiences platform, has acquired generative engine optimization, or GEO, upstart Scrunch. Scrunch’s tech is designed to help brands appear in AI answer engines. The deal is valued at around $225 million, per a Bloomberg report. 

Sitecore declined to confirm the value. Scrunch did not respond to a request for comment.

Scrunch’s platform shows brands real-time signals about how they appear across various AI platforms. It also offers competitive analysis and technical audits, helping brands optimize their content for discoverability in AI systems and by autonomous agents through its Agent Experience Platform, or AXP. 

“We’re at a pivotal moment where companies must rethink traditional digital strategies and accept that the internet must be written for machines to understand if we want humans to experience it,” Eric Stine, Sitecore’s CEO, said in a statement. “With Scrunch, we enable our customers to understand how they are represented in AI-generated answers and automatically act on those insights, maximizing how they reach, engage, and serve their customers.” 

Scrunch works with enterprise businesses, including some of the Fortune 500. Notable clients include Lenovo, Skims, Headspace, and Penn State University. It previously raised $26 million, including a $15 million Series A last summer led by Decibel, with participation from Mayfield, Homebrew, and others. 

The GEO space is becoming increasingly competitive. As brands race to show up in the AI experiences where consumers spend more of their time, an emergent crowd of startups is vying for their dollars. 

Brands are also seeing higher payoffs from investing in GEO, at least according to Scrunch CEO and cofounder Chris Andrew, who told ADWEEK last year that conversion rates in AI search are three to five times higher than in traditional online search. “A visitor coming from AI search is buying faster than a traditional organic visitor,” he said. “We want to be facilitating that entire process and dynamically optimizing what an AI agent consumes.”

Scrunch’s AXP will be especially valuable to Sitecore, in Andrew’s estimation. “By joining forces, we’re helping companies meet buyers where they are, moving beyond traditional SEO to win inside AI-generated answers. That’s where Scrunch’s AXP is a critical advantage, delivering content in a format AI agents can read and use, without disrupting the human experience, allowing brands to become the trusted sources that power those answers,” he said in a statement today.

In research conducted by cloud computing and content firm Akamai, AXP-enabled webpages saw a 364% lift in brand presence in responses to non-branded AI prompts, and a 218% spike in citations appearing in AI responses. 

With Scrunch, Stine said, Sitecore can enable brands to “show up with greater clarity, authority, and relevance so they can build trust, increase share of voice, and influence decisions early in the buying journey when it matters most.”

Kendra Barnett

Kendra Barnett is Adweek's senior tech reporter.

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