Zeta Global has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Senso, a Y Combinator-backed AI engineering company whose technology already supports Zeta’s Generative Engine Optimization offering.
The acquisition aims to bring additional AI technology in-house, add specialized AI engineering talent, and deepen Zeta’s connection to frontier AI models and personal agents.
Senso’s technology is focused on helping enterprises improve how their information and brands appear within AI-generated experiences.
As consumers increasingly use AI assistants to discover and evaluate products and companies, Zeta sees an opportunity to connect those interactions more directly to enterprise customer data and marketing activity.
The company plans to combine Senso’s capabilities with the Zeta Data Cloud to expand products that help companies understand, optimize and remediate their visibility across major AI platforms.
Those platforms include ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews.
Zeta also plans to use Senso’s technology to help customers determine who AI-generated answers are reaching and connect those insights with customer intelligence, marketing activation and measurable business outcomes.
The strategy extends beyond simply measuring whether a brand appears in an AI-generated response.
Zeta is seeking to create infrastructure that links enterprise data and context to AI models and then carries the resulting intelligence into channels where companies can take action.
The company describes this approach as intelligent AI infrastructure.
Senso is expected to strengthen Zeta’s AI trust and discoverability capabilities while contributing to a broader roadmap built around connecting proprietary enterprise knowledge with external AI systems.
Senso co-founder and CEO Saroop Bharwani and the company’s team will join Zeta after the acquisition.
Bharwani brings more than 20 years of experience working with regulated enterprises.
He founded Senso as an AI research lab early in enterprise deep learning, and the company combined applied AI research with engineering work to improve how businesses use trusted information in AI interactions and customer experiences.
Zeta plans to work with Senso’s team to maintain continuity for existing customers as the businesses are integrated.
The acquisition also builds on the companies’ existing relationship because Senso’s technology already helps power Zeta’s Generative Engine Optimization offering.
Zeta’s GEO capabilities are intended to help companies adapt to a changing discovery environment in which consumers may increasingly receive product, company and service recommendations directly from generative AI systems rather than traditional search results.
Bringing Senso’s engineering capabilities inside Zeta could allow the company to more closely integrate GEO with its existing customer intelligence, marketing and data infrastructure.
Support: LUMA Partners served as an adviser to Senso on the transaction.
KEY QUOTES:
“Models are increasingly ubiquitous, but what creates an advantage is the infrastructure that connects an enterprise’s data and context to those models, turns the result into action, and turns action into business impact. That is where Zeta plays. Senso will bring AI engineering talent and deeper connectivity to the frontier models and personal agents shaping how customers discover brands. The acquisition is an important move in its own right and separate from the announcements we will make at Zeta Live 2026.”
David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Zeta Global
“Senso was founded on the simple principle of making AI more useful in the real world, not more conversational. AI discovery is becoming an increasingly important part of the customer journey, but visibility alone is not enough. Together with Zeta, we can combine Senso’s AI capabilities with Zeta’s proprietary data and customer intelligence to help businesses understand who AI is reaching, improve how they appear in AI-generated answers and connect those insights to measurable outcomes.”
Saroop Bharwani, Co-Founder and CEO of Senso
