Searchable Raises £10.3M Funding Led by Headline to Scale AI Search Platform

Searchable, the London-based AI search optimisation startup founded in 2025 by serial entrepreneur Chris Donnelly, has raised £10.3 million ($14 million) at a £62.9 million ($85 million) valuation. The round was led by venture capital firm Headline, an earlier backer of Semrush, Bumble, Farfetch and Sonos.

The raise comes less than five months after the company's January launch. Searchable says it reached £1.4 million in annual recurring revenue within four and a half months of going live, and currently runs at £2 million ARR.

What Searchable does

Searchable is built to help brands measure and improve how they appear inside AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. The platform tracks brand visibility across large language models, connects analytics from Google Analytics 4 and Search Console, and uses an agentic AI layer to rewrite content, restructure metadata and surface recommendations that improve how LLMs read and rank a brand.

The company's enterprise client list includes American Express, KPMG, Siemens, Tencent, Pfizer, Boston Consulting Group, DigitalOcean, VaynerMedia and Havas.

Dominic R. Wilhelm, Partner at Headline, framed the investment around a fundamental change in how customers discover products.

"AI driven discovery is rewriting how customers find products, and the economics are moving fast," Wilhelm said. "As more searches are answered directly by AI, brands that are invisible in this layer of search will simply see less demand. The companies that adapt first will protect and grow market share; those that don't will lose it quietly."

He drew a direct comparison with Headline's earlier bet on Semrush. "We backed Semrush early as the category leader and exited following its IPO at around a $2 billion market cap. Now, we see a new generation of businesses coming up and Searchable is primed to win this market, which is why we are ecstatic to lead the current round."

Wilhelm added that Headline sees Searchable becoming part of core infrastructure for the shift, not a reporting tool but an execution layer that improves the visibility and revenue outcomes leadership teams care about.

Chris Donnelly, founder of Searchable, said the company is seeing customers convert at much higher rates from AI search than from traditional channels.

"Search is going through a once in a generation reset," Donnelly said. "When an AI assistant recommends your brand, customers arrive with more intent, more trust and a shorter path to purchase. Based on our own data customers are converting at 3x higher when they arrive from ChatGPT and other LLMs. If you aren't visible in those answers, you're giving ground to competitors every day."

Donnelly, who previously sold SEO agency Verb for £18.5 million ($25 million) and scaled eldercare platform Lottie Org to a nine-figure valuation, said the new round is funding an execution engine that aims to cut operational SEO costs by up to 40 percent while growing high intent traffic.

Searchable plans to accelerate product development across its execution engine and expand in the US and UK markets. The capital follows an earlier $4 million (£3.1 million) pre-seed round led by Freestyle VC in December 2025, at a $40 million valuation. The new round values the company at more than double that level inside five months.

The round is notable for three reasons.

First, it confirms that AI search optimisation is now a venture category in its own right. US competitor Profound raised a $96 million Series C in February 2026 at a $1 billion valuation, also targeting brand visibility inside AI answers. London now has its own well-funded contender in the same space.

Second, the pace of the raise sends a market signal. A second priced round inside six months, at a 2x valuation step-up, is exceptional in a UK funding environment where Beauhurst data has shown seed valuations at four-year lows and fundraising cycles running 6-12 months. Strong revenue traction and a clear category narrative still pull capital quickly when both are in place.

Third, the rise of AI-driven discovery has direct implications for every UK founder running an inbound playbook. Bizztor's analysis of Google zero-click searches and their impact on UK founders shows nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click to an external site. As AI answers absorb more of that intent, the underlying SEO discipline is changing shape, and the founders treating AI visibility as a core distribution channel rather than a side project will compound the advantage.

For early-stage founders evaluating their own go-to-market, the broader playbook still applies. Bizztor's guide on growth strategies UK first-time founders should know covers the structural levers that make any acquisition channel, AI search included, perform harder.

Searchable was founded in 2025 by Chris Donnelly with co-founders Sam Hogan and Arya Nagabhyru. Donnelly's earlier ventures include Verb Brands, a luxury digital agency acquired by Croud in 2021, and Lottie, a UK eldercare comparison platform that reached a reported £250 million valuation within three years.

He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in 2020.