Ian Howells

I originally hypothesized that AI was over hyped and the size of its growth curve overstated. So, I sought to evaluate and likely disprove the prevailing narrative about the size of AI. However, what I found is that the size and trajectory of AI are *understated* and that AI is much bigger than I thought. Study: graphite.io/five-percent/a… Key Findings 1. Monthly sessions of AI are now 56% the size of search worldwide and 34% in the US, 4x-5x larger than previous reports that only include web data. 2. AI now receives 45B monthly sessions worldwide, and 5.4B monthly sessions in the US. 3. Search-related sessions of AI (Asking prompts) are now 28% the size of search worldwide and 17% in the US. 4. AI has grown even larger across the World than in the US, with worldwide sessions 7x that of the US. 5. Search has not decreased, and neither has Google. Instead, the pie has gotten bigger. Total search-related sessions, combining search engines and search on LLMs, have increased by 26% worldwide and by 16% in the US, comparing 2025 with 2024. 6. 83% of AI usage occurs in mobile apps worldwide, and 75% in the US.

Today, I'm excited to announce we raised a $9M seed round to help businesses get leads from AI Search Engines! AI is changing B2B buyer behavior rapidly. Now prospects are researching vendors on AI Search Engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. They're asking millions of questions that the internet has never seen before. All before they ever get on a sales call. This is a huge reset moment. And yet 90% of businesses are completely invisible there. We built @gushwork to solve exactly this problem. An end-to-end solution for businesses to dominate and get leads from AI search For us, it does not end at AI visibility, impressions, or even traffic. It’s all about the outcome - getting real, qualified leads from AI search. Period. And @LightspeedIndia, @SusquehannaVC, @BCapitalGroup, Seaborne Capital, @beenextVC, @sparrowcapvc and @2point2club just bet $9M on us to solve this problem! After months of research & experiments, today, we are releasing our AI Search product for general availability - launched in beta about 90 days back and is growing like crazy already: - Hit $1.5M ARR in 90 days - Growing 80% month-on-month - Driving 1000+ leads/month across customers Welcome to new investors who joined us for the seed- → @SaiAraveti, @KanishkM96 & Bhavani at Susquehanna who’s leading the round Thank you to our early investors who doubled down...You put your trust in us before we had anything at all. → @rahultaneja, @dkhare and @romitme at Lightspeed. → @KaranMohla and Deepanshu at B Capital → Pran and Jay at Seaborne → @yash_sparrow and @am_aakash_goyal at Sparrow → @AnirudhGarg24, @PantSaksham and @aarushishawarma at Beenext And a special mention to @skipiit & @smondal1008 at 2.2 Club for access to their massive network of IIT alumni and their angel participation! Big shoutouts to the ones steering the ship! → @_Adithya_V - my Co-Founder who is the real brain behind everything Gushwork does. → @Punit1108 - our mighty CTO who takes on the hardest engineering problems with a smile on his face. → @swapnilsinha07 - the creative & analytical mind behind the growth engine that Gushwork is building and all the other rockstars who make up the backbone of Gushwork - Rahul, @awwdarsh, Akash, Tushar, Snehith, @thericebowlgirl, Amey, Yash B And an insane force of 10x team members who are taking on some of the hardest problems every day and solving them with zeal. LFG! 🚀 If you want to see how many leads AI search could drive for your business, reply "Gushwork" and we'll send you the link.