Insider Brief
- ChatFeatured, an AI search optimization platform, closed an oversubscribed $2 million pre-seed round led by Storytime Capital with participation from Garage Capital and BY Venture Partners, expanded from an original $1.5 million target after investor demand
- The company, founded in Toronto in January 2026 by Farris Nasr and Nithiiyan Skhanthan, helps marketing teams analyze what large language models cite, identify competitor gaps, and build, publish, and track content to improve AI search visibility
- Funding will support team growth, go-to-market expansion, and an autonomous answer engine optimization agent; ChatFeatured now serves customers across the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, and Germany, growing more than 40 percent month-over-month
PRESS RELEASE — ChatFeatured, the AI search optimization platform that helps marketing teams turn visibility data into published content and measurable results, has announced an oversubscribed USD $2 million pre-seed round. The round was led by Storytime Capital, with participation from Garage Capital and BY Venture Partners.
The financing comes little more than six months after ChatFeatured launched in the first week of January 2026 — a pace that reflects how quickly AI search has emerged as a discovery and buying channel. ChatFeatured initially set out to raise USD $1.5 million and expanded the round to USD $2 million following investor demand. The company will use the funding to grow its team, expand its go-to-market efforts and build an autonomous answer engine optimization (AEO) agent designed to operate as an extension of the marketing team.
AI assistants are increasingly shaping how people discover, compare and choose products. But most AI search optimization tools stop at measurement: they show marketing teams where a company appears, without doing the work required to improve that visibility. ChatFeatured closes that loop. Their agentic platform analyzes what large language models are already citing, identifies where competitors are winning, builds a content strategy, writes and publishes the content, and tracks the resulting lift.
“AI search is already a discovery and buying channel, but most marketing teams are being handed dashboards that tell them there is a problem and leave them to solve it,” said Farris Nasr, co-founder and CEO of ChatFeatured. “We built ChatFeatured to do the work. This funding allows us to grow the team, reach more companies and build an autonomous agent that proactively finds opportunities and acts as an extension of the marketing team.”
In the months since launch, ChatFeatured has begun serving customers across the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany, growing over 40% month-over-month. Every customer on their platform sees a lift in citations and traffic from AI search engines, which is ultimately leading to increased revenue.
“AI search isn’t coming — it’s already where buying decisions are being made. What impressed us about ChatFeatured is that while most companies are still asking the question, this team built the answer, got it in front of customers, and earned fanatic loyalty through performance. Gretzky said, ‘Skate to where the puck is going.’ ChatFeatured is already ahead of it.” — Lauren Epstein, General Partner @ Storytime Capital
ChatFeatured was founded by Farris Nasr and Nithiiyan Skhanthan, who met at a Toronto Tech Week networking event and built the platform together. Farris spent over a decade driving go-to-market strategies across multiple companies before teaching himself to code; Nithiiyan got his start as an engineer at Tesla and was an early hire at two VC-backed startups, including the YC-backed startup LifestyleRx. Ryan Nahas soon joined as founding Head of Growth. Having met Farris at Salesforce 10 years ago, Ryan brings experience as a former Head of SMB Growth at Salesforce and two private equity exits under his belt. He joined the team after experiencing ChatFeatured’s impact firsthand as a customer.
“Every major shift in how people discover products and make buying decisions creates an opportunity to build an enduring company. AI search is that shift today. ChatFeatured recognized it early, moved quickly to build for it, and is already delighting customers who are seeing real results and referring others. This is exactly the kind of founding team we’re excited to partner with at Garage Capital.” — Garage Capital
ChatFeatured’s next-generation autonomous agent will move beyond waiting for a marketer to check a dashboard. It is being designed to proactively identify a company’s gaps in their online presence, surface third-party sources worth pursuing, recommend editorial opportunities, create and publish supporting content, and tell the marketing team what to do next.
For more information, visit chatfeatured.com.
About ChatFeatured
ChatFeatured is an AI search optimization platform that helps marketing teams get cited when customers ask AI what to buy. Rather than stopping at analytics, ChatFeatured works backward from the sources large language models already cite, identifies competitive and content gaps, builds a strategy, writes and publishes content, and tracks the resulting lift across major AI search platforms. Founded in Toronto in 2026, ChatFeatured serves customers across five countries. Learn more at chatfeatured.com.
Contacts
Media contact
Farris Nasr | Co-founder and CEO @ ChatFeatured
press@chatfeatured.com | chatfeatured.com
Featured image: Credit: ChatFeatured
