As consumers shift from typing search queries into browsers to asking AI assistants for direct answers, a major transformation is underway in how brands are discovered. In this rapidly changing landscape, Copenhagen based AI startup Kime has secured two million euro in pre seed funding to help companies understand and optimise how they appear inside large language model generated responses, an emerging challenge many marketers have yet to recognise.
A Strong Pre Seed Backing for an Emerging Market
The funding round was led by PSV Tech with participation from Nordic Makers and several angel investors from Copenhagen and Stockholm. The investment signals growing confidence in the new category Kime is helping define, where brand visibility is shaped by AI systems rather than by traditional search algorithms.
Unlike classic search engine optimisation, where brands optimise content to appear in long lists of search results, AI generated responses only offer a handful of recommendations. This shift is expected to influence a significant share of consumer spending as AI assistants become the first point of contact for many purchasing decisions.
A New Discipline Generative Engine Optimisation
Kime refers to this shift as generative engine optimisation, a discipline focused on understanding how large language models cite, rank and interpret brands. As most companies have no visibility into whether their brand shows up in AI recommendations, Kime aims to fill a growing blind spot for marketing teams.
The platform tracks brand mentions across leading AI assistants and platforms. It measures where brands are positioned, how they are described, the sentiment of responses and the sources that models use when generating answers. This insight helps marketers understand how their brand is represented and how that visibility compares to competitors.
Founder and CEO Vasilij Brandt says interest from marketing leaders has grown rapidly because AI assistants are already influencing customer journeys in ways many organisations are only beginning to understand.
Early Commercial Momentum Across Industries
Since launching, Kime has seen strong early traction. In a single month, the company conducted more than sixty product demonstrations with senior marketing teams and executives across Europe. This early demand reflects rising concern among brands about how they appear when consumers ask AI assistants for trusted recommendations or product comparisons.
Kime has also expanded its offering with an agency focused module. This allows marketing agencies to analyse AI visibility for their entire client portfolios and provide more comprehensive reporting to brands. The platform is already being used by companies across multiple sectors and by agencies that want to integrate AI visibility into their service models.
Building the Analytics Layer for AI Era Brand Visibility
Currently, Kime provides analytics dashboards that show brand visibility across prompts, platforms and categories. It includes tools for sentiment assessment, competitor benchmarking, share of voice tracking and analysis of the domains and publications that influence AI generated answers.
These insights give marketing teams a clearer view of how AI systems perceive their brand and where strategic adjustments may be needed to maintain or improve visibility.
As AI models continue to diversify, companies face the challenge of managing their presence across an expanding number of platforms. Kime aims to become the central system that helps marketing teams navigate this new environment.
Expanding Toward Full Stack AI Marketing
Looking ahead, Kime plans to evolve into a broader AI marketing layer. Its goal is to help brands not only measure but also manage and optimise their presence across multiple AI assistants as the landscape becomes more fragmented. By establishing itself early in this emerging category, Kime hopes to define the tools and metrics that companies will rely on as AI visibility becomes a standard part of marketing strategy.
By securing its first institutional funding, Kime is positioning itself at the forefront of a new era in digital marketing, where the competition for visibility shifts from search pages to AI generated answers.