Lantern

Lantern, also known as Ask Lantern, was founded in 2020 by an experienced team, including David Bromberg, with backgrounds spanning Google, McKinsey, Stripe, and Walmart’s Applied AI Group, alongside academic ties to Stanford and IIT. The company operates as an AI platform and growth accelerator for revenue teams, driven by a founding vision to redefine how brands secure visibility and drive revenue in the evolving landscape of AI search. Its core mission addresses the challenge of declining traditional search volume and the increasing influence of AI on buying decisions, offering a solution to optimise brand presence where AI engines derive their answers.

Lantern’s core offering revolves around its "Marketing Agents for AI Search," an advanced platform designed to track, analyse, and optimise a brand's footprint across leading AI search engines such including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The platform deploys autonomous agents that continuously monitor brand representation, identify citation gaps, and research, write, and publish optimised content to secure AI citations. Key features include a search analytics platform providing real-time insights and automated reporting. It also incorporates an attribution layer to accurately identify AI-referred sessions and trace them through to conversion. Lantern offers specialised agents for AEO (AI Engine Optimization), comprehensive Content pipelines for both human and bot traffic, and traditional SEO to shape organic search presence. The platform integrates seamlessly with essential marketing tools such as Google Search Console, Sanity, Slack, WordPress, HubSpot, and Shopify, streamlining content workflows within an agent workspace.

Lantern addresses a significant shift in the digital landscape, where AI now influences one in two buying decisions, leading to a 25% decrease in traditional search volume and 60% of Google searches ending without a click. The platform demonstrates substantial impact by enabling brands to capture the highly engaged audience driven by AI, noting that AI-referred visitors boast a 14.2% conversion rate, significantly higher than the 2.8% from standard Google clicks. This focus on verifiable outcomes underscores its market relevance. The company has garnered considerable trust and investment, having secured $8.8 million in total funding, including a Seed round concluded in July 2023. The expertise of its founding team, drawing from powerhouses like Google and McKinsey, further bolsters its Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) within the AI marketing sector.

Lantern distinguishes itself in the competitive marketing technology landscape through its hyper-focus on AI Search Visibility and a truly full-stack, automated approach. Unlike traditional SEO tools that primarily target keyword rankings, Lantern's platform is engineered to optimise a brand's "citation presence" within AI-generated answers, a crucial differentiator in the era of answer engines. Its innovative use of autonomous AI agents automates the entire content marketing workflow – from building comprehensive customer models and identifying content gaps to researching, writing, and directly publishing optimised content to various Content Management Systems. This integrated solution streamlines operations for revenue teams, offering a significant competitive advantage over disparate point solutions that require manual assembly and lack a unified AI search focus.