In a world where AI is increasingly deciding what you see, one startup is cashing in on the panic. Profound, which builds marketing software to help brands appear in AI search results, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation. That's less than seven months after its $96 million Series C. Because nothing says "we're on to something" like doubling your valuation before your last round's coffee has gone cold.

Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins led the round, with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and South Park Commons also chipping in. Clearly, the venture capital community has decided that the next gold rush isn't AI itself, but helping brands figure out how to game AI.

Launched two years ago, Profound started as an analytics platform and has since expanded to help companies research and create marketing strategies. In other words, it helps businesses understand how AI helps consumers discover their brands - a sentence that would have been gibberish a few years ago but now represents a multibillion-dollar opportunity.

The company is part of a wave of startups in the GEO/AEO space (generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization, respectively), where companies try to find ways to surface their products in the AI systems customers are increasingly using for search. Because why bother with old-fashioned SEO when you can optimize for a chatbot that might just make up an answer anyway?

Profound says its revenue has increased 3x in the past six months, and it now has more than 1,000 enterprise customers, including Comcast, The Estée Lauder Companies, and Walmart. So if you've recently asked an AI about mascara or cable bundles, congratulations - you may have been part of a marketing experiment.