The race to build the “agentic internet” is on, with consumers expected to increasingly offload tasks like travel and grocery shopping to autonomous software. It presents brands with a new challenge: how to stand out when the customer is an AI agent rather than a human.
Founded in New York in 2024, Limy has built a platform to help companies better understand how AI agents decide which brands and products to recommend to their users.
Limy is set to announce on Wednesday that it has raised $10 million in seed funding led by venture capital firm Flybridge. A16z’s Speedrun program, Axiom, Clarim, JRV, AnD, and Communitas also participated.
Limy plugs into a brand’s content delivery network, such as Cloudflare, to detect when an AI agent visits their website. It then analyzes which content the agent fetched and the prompt a user entered into a chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini that triggered the visit.
Armed with that information, Limy produces insights for brands about the types of prompts that are surfacing their products in AI answers and whether the agent’s visit to their website led to a purchase. Brands can apply those insights to help boost their visibility within large language models. Limy makes money through a tiered subscription model based on a company’s size and the capabilities it requires.
Aviv Shamny, Limy’s CEO, told Business Insider in an interview that his company differs from other startups offering generative engine optimization services because these competitor analytics tools typically track human clicks and pageviews.
Agents are “going in through the pipes,” he said. “They behave completely differently.”
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Shamny said connecting website visits from agents to real business metrics is a “complicated vector search process,” which helps set Limy up to be a player as advertising gets introduced to AI chatbots.
OpenAI announced this month that it is testing ads on ChatGPT. Google last year introduced ads to the AI Overviews on its search results page and within its AI Mode, which allows users to ask follow-up questions.
“We’re right at that junction between what agents are looking for, why they’re surfacing ads, how these ads are even being interpreted by these agents,” and whether those ads will lead to an eventual sale, Shamny said.
Tying a prompt to a conversion means Limy could tell a brand like Nike that the prompt “best running shoes for men running a marathon” had generated $10 million in sales over a quarter, and that this is the type of prompt or topic that a brand should double down on advertising against, Shamny said.
Shamny said Limy intends to invest its new funding in its sales, marketing, and growth teams as the company expands globally. He expects the team will grow to around 120 people by the end of the year, up from about 25.
Check out the pitch deck Limy used to secure its $10 million seed investment, shared exclusively with Business Insider. Some of the slides have been omitted or redacted.
Limy describes itself as an infrastructure platform that helps brands optimize their performance for the agentic web.
Shamny said AI agents will increasingly carry out tasks for consumers, such as booking flights or shopping.
In an agentic web, ‘humans are not your audience,’ Limy says.
Instead, brands need to think about optimizing their web presence for AI agents.
‘LLMs write the rules’ for the new internet, Limy says.
The slide depicts someone asking ChatGPT for ideas for a housewarming gift for a friend, a hotel in Las Vegas, and a playlist for a party.
Limy envisions a new ‘B2A’ business model: business-to-agents.
AI agents are evaluating, choosing, and acting on behalf of humans, Limy says.
A growing share of web traffic comes from bots and AI agents.
Limy offers a way for brands to see how AI engines crawl, fetch, and index their web pages.
Limy describes its offering as a ‘control layer for search.’
The slide shows a section of Limy’s user interface that tracks site visits from AI bots.
This slide showcases Limy’s high-level product offering.
Limy wants to corner the markets of attribution, analytics, agentic ads, and agentic commerce.
Limy integrates within a customer’s CDN.
It then detects and analyzes AI bot visits, presenting actionable insights for brands.
Limy says it can then trace back the AI chatbot prompts that led to a conversion, such as a sale.
Its attribution tool can help brands maximize revenue from AI search.
Limy says agentic commerce is already driving real revenue for brands.
The slide shows how a luggage brand could use Limy’s tool to see how a particular suitcase stacks up in product rankings within LLMs.
Limy also wants to play a role in agentic advertising.
Limy says brands can use its insights to ensure they’re placing ads against the best topics and prompts to drive revenue.
Limy sees itself as an ‘operating layer’ as commerce increasingly moves through AI pipes.
“Our North Star is to build the internet for agents,” Shamny said. “When agents are going to dominate the web, we’re giving the ability for brands to be a part of the conversation.”
Limy’s customer base includes Fortune 100 companies.
While this slide is redacted, customers listed on its website include AstraZeneca, Kia, and Samsung.