ChatFeatured has raised $2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed financing round to develop an autonomous AI search optimization agent for marketing teams. Storytime Capital led the round, with participation from Garage Capital and BY Venture Partners.
The Toronto-based company initially planned to raise $1.5 million but expanded the round following investor demand. It will use the capital to grow its team, expand go-to-market activities and accelerate product development.
ChatFeatured helps brands improve their visibility within responses generated by AI assistants and answer engines. The company launched during the first week of January 2026 and serves customers in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.
As consumers increasingly ask AI tools for product comparisons and recommendations, marketers are beginning to track whether their brands appear in generated answers. This emerging practice is commonly described as answer engine optimization, or AEO.
Many AI search optimization platforms primarily measure brand mentions and citations. ChatFeatured is designed to act on that information by identifying the sources that large language models reference, analyzing competitor visibility and determining where additional content may improve a company’s presence.
The platform can develop a content strategy, write and publish material and measure changes in AI citations and referral traffic. ChatFeatured said its customers have experienced increases in citations and traffic from AI search engines, although results may vary by company, market and implementation.
The company plans to develop a more autonomous agent that proactively identifies gaps in a brand’s online presence. The system will also surface third-party publications worth pursuing, recommend editorial opportunities and create supporting content.
ChatFeatured said the autonomous agent will function as an extension of a marketing team rather than waiting for users to review a dashboard and manually assign follow-up work.
The company reported month-over-month growth exceeding 40% since launch. It was founded by CEO Farris Nasr and Nithiiyan Skhanthan after they met at a Toronto Tech Week networking event.
Nasr previously spent more than a decade working in go-to-market roles before learning software development. Skhanthan began his career as an engineer at Tesla and later worked at two venture-backed startups.
Ryan Nahas subsequently joined as Founding Head of Growth after first using ChatFeatured as a customer. His previous experience includes serving as Head of Small and Medium Business Growth at Salesforce and participating in two private equity exits.
KEY QUOTES:
“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.”
“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.”
Farris Nasr, Co-Founder and CEO of ChatFeatured
“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 at Storytime Capital
“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
