Ranketta, the AI visibility platform helping brands understand and improve their presence in AI search and AI shopping results, has raised €1 million in pre-seed funding. Lighthouse Ventures led the round with participation from Gi21 Capital.
The platform enables ecommerce and direct-to-consumer companies to grow their presence across ChatGPT Shopping, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It does this by showing how both a brand and its individual products appear in AI-generated answers. After just two months of operation, the company is already working with 20 European brands and is now preparing for U.S. expansion.
Data shows that 50% of consumers are already using AI-powered search to inform purchasing decisions. And 44% now rely on it more than Google. Spending influenced by AI search is expected to reach $750 billion by 2028.
Yet fewer than 40% of marketers list Generative Engine Optimization as a priority, and just 16% of brands track their AI search performance at all. That means brands can be highly visible on Google but remain almost invisible inside large language models. This shift accelerated further this week with OpenAI's rollout of its new shopping research tool, turning ChatGPT into a mainstream shopping assistant for millions of consumers.
Ranketta is the only software in Europe capable of measuring how often and how well individual products appear in answers generated by AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, and AI Overview. The platform shows which items LLMs recommend most, why they appear, and how brands can improve their placement.
Alongside product insights, Ranketta also tracks a brand's overall presence in AI responses. This includes whether mentions are positive, how high the brand ranks, and how frequently it appears. The platform also identifies the articles and sources these tools rely on when referencing a brand.
"Coming from the research world, I saw firsthand the lack of visibility that companies have into how AI systems influence what people buy," said Vojtěch Oravec, CEO and founder of Ranketta. "Traditional SEO and analytics no longer show the full picture of how customers discover products, and brands need tools that work across both old and new search channels. Ranketta turns AI Shopping into a real acquisition channel that companies can monitor, improve, and grow. Our mission is to ensure every brand can compete fairly in the AI-driven discovery landscape."
The platform includes an AI Copilot that reviews each brand's data and provides tailored recommendations on what content to create. It also highlights which citations or websites will have the biggest impact on visibility.
Because Ranketta's technology measures both brand and product visibility in more detail than other tools, it gives companies a clearer and more reliable view of their presence in AI search. Along with that view come practical steps to help them appear more often and more favorably.
Founded in 2025 by AI researcher and product builder Vojtěch Oravec, Ranketta is a platform that measures and improves brand visibility in AI-generated answers. It helps D2C, ecommerce, and B2B brands track their presence across large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. The company is based in Brno, Czech Republic, with plans for international expansion.
Ranketta's technology originated as a solo prototype built by Oravec, a 21-year-old Czech engineer. He began coding at 16 and became a software engineer at 18. Before launching Ranketta, Oravec conducted research in the group of Tomáš Mikolov, one of the world's most cited AI scientists, at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) at Czech Technical University. There, he was responsible for collecting data to train AI models. During this process, he noticed just how dependent these models are on external data and how strongly the training data shapes the final output. That insight became the foundation for Ranketta. He later became the youngest product manager at enterprise company Henry Schein.
In just two months since launch, Ranketta has reached $100K ARR and now supports more than 20 rapidly growing European brands. These include Brainmarket, Boost.space, Purple Technology, and Sloneek.
The new funding will accelerate expansion across Europe, support entry into the U.S. market, and grow the company's engineering, product, and sales teams. It will also advance development of Ranketta's integrations with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms. In terms of allocation, 60% of the funds will go toward expansion, marketing, and sales to scale operations and acquire new customers. The remaining 40% will be invested in product development to strengthen the core technology and engineering.
Michal Zálešák, Managing Partner at Lighthouse Ventures, said: "Many companies are trying to address AI search, but Ranketta's precision and product-level visibility set it apart. The company's early growth, together with Vojtěch's technical vision, are both highly impressive. With AI search set to influence hundreds of billions in consumer spending over the next few years, we see Ranketta emerging as a key player in this rapidly growing market."
Beyond capital, both Lighthouse Ventures and Gi21 Capital bring a network of scaling and sales mentors based in the U.S., along with direct connections to Silicon Valley investment bankers. This strategic support will be particularly valuable as Ranketta pursues its planned expansion into the American market.
Damir Špoljarič, Founder and GP at Gi21 Capital, added: "Traditional SEO won't define the next decade, AI visibility will. Ranketta is among the first platforms to clearly decode how AI models evaluate brands and products, giving companies the insight they need to grow in an AI-first marketplace."
