Canadian AI startup ChatFeatured has secured a $2 million oversubscribed pre-seed funding round, with Abu Dhabi-based BY Venture Partners joining Storytime Capital and Garage Capital to back the company’s vision of helping brands win visibility in the age of AI-powered search.
Founded in 2026 by Farris Nasr and Nithiiyan Skhanthan, ChatFeatured is building an Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) platform designed for a new era where consumers increasingly rely on AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity instead of traditional search engines.
The platform enables marketing teams to track how their brands appear in AI-generated responses, uncover visibility gaps, and receive recommendations to improve their presence across AI search platforms. It also automates content creation and publishing, helping businesses increase AI citations and drive referral traffic from conversational search experiences.
According to the company, ChatFeatured has expanded into five countries within six months of launching and is growing at more than 40% month-over-month.
The fresh capital will be used to expand the team, accelerate commercial growth, and develop autonomous AI search agents capable of continuously identifying optimisation opportunities and automatically executing marketing actions on behalf of brands.
For BY Venture Partners, the investment reinforces its strategy of backing globally scalable AI companies while creating stronger links between international founders and the MENA ecosystem through capital, expertise, and strategic networks.
Why it matters
As AI assistants rapidly reshape how people discover products, services, and information, Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is emerging as the next evolution of digital marketing. Businesses are beginning to optimise not only for search engine rankings but also for inclusion in AI-generated answers.
Startups like ChatFeatured are positioning themselves at the center of this shift by providing the infrastructure brands need to measure, improve, and automate their AI search visibility. The investment also highlights growing investor confidence in startups building tools for what many see as the next major layer of the AI economy.
