# Searchable just raised $14M. Here's what actually happened. Chris Donnelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Searchable, on raising $14 million at an $85 million valuation led by Headline — the timeline, why the category is shifting, and what we're building next. **Published:** May 18, 2026 **Author:** Chris Donnelly --- Today we announced that Searchable has raised $14 million at an $85 million valuation, led by Headline. The same firm that backed Semrush early and sold their stake when Adobe bought it for $1.9 billion. I want to write something honest about it. ## The timeline and numbers, briefly We launched our free beta in November. We launched Searchable out of Beta and opened paid accounts publicly in January. Just over four months ago. In that time we've reached over $2 million in annual recurring revenue, signed more than 500 paying customers, and converted eleven blue-chip enterprises off other AEO platforms. I've started a few companies in my life but the speed of this market is like nothing I've ever seen, and I don't think I've ever worked on a product that provides its customers with so much value. We are a good team, no doubt. But there are two real macro trends happening here. Firstly, the nature of search has changed. SEO is here to stay, however there is a whole new conversational layer that is fragmented now across multiple engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity and of course Google. Secondly, well-built AI tools, with very strong harnesses and meticulous training, can provide professionals with incredible speed and efficiency. So we are building within a massive rising tide and we are providing SEO teams the ability to work faster and more efficiently with our AEO agent. ## What's actually happening to search Sixty-five percent of Google searches already end without a click. AI Overviews appear on nearly half of all searches. By 2027, AI-led search is projected to hit around 70 percent penetration. The behaviour shift is already happening. I spent 10 years building an SEO agency and every business I have built has focused on SEO as our primary channel. That isn't going anywhere but people are now asking Google, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and more the question and they are getting an answer they trust and believe in more than they ever did with traditional search results. When your brand is in that answer, customers arrive with more intent, more trust, and a much shorter path to purchase. Our own data shows customers convert at 2x higher when they come from an LLM versus traditional search. When your brand isn't in that answer, you don't exist. ## Why Headline Dom Wilhelm at Headline didn't need a long pitch on the category. They backed Semrush and went on that journey with them before their exit. They've watched this movie before. They know how important SEO is and this new evolution of AEO. What they told us in the room was simple. They agreed that the job of SEOs and marketers has got harder now there are more surfaces to optimise for. They agreed that the future wasn't Semrush 2 like many of our competitors are trying to build. They agreed that the future was providing SEO and marketing teams with incredible agentic tooling that will help them deliver their work faster and more effectively. Their portfolio also includes Bumble, Farfetch, Goop and Sonos, which is to say they know how to back brand-led businesses that scale globally. That matters to us. Searchable isn't a tool. It's infrastructure for how brands get found in the AI era. ## What we're actually building Most companies in this space are dashboards. They tell you what AI engines are saying about your brand. That's useful. It's also not enough. Searchable provides that already, but what we are building is very different. Searchable is an agentic co-pilot trained on your brand. It has 40 specific SEO and GEO skills and works alongside your team to actually do the work. Audits, content optimisation, technical fixes, content gap analysis, all of it. The point isn't to give marketers another tab to check in the morning. The point is to automate the underlying work that drives visibility across every AI engine that matters. For more than a decade, SEO has been labour-intensive. Over the next two years, a large share of that work becomes automatable so teams can focus on the more important strategic work. Our goal is to give companies an execution layer for AI search that cuts operational SEO labour down. ## What I've learned in four months A few things I didn't expect. The buying cycles are short. When a CMO sees their AI visibility data for the first time, the conversation moves quickly. There's no committee phase. There's a "we need this now" phase. That's rare in B2B software and we don't take it for granted. The migrations from legacy tools are happening faster than I thought possible. The team matters more than anything. I've built businesses before. I scaled another to a nine-figure valuation. None of that prepared me for how much the right team would compress the timeline at Searchable. The founding team have built something I genuinely believe will be one of the defining marketing tools of the decade. ## What's next We're using this round to do three things. One, we're hiring. Across product, engineering, partnerships and GTM. If you want to build the execution layer for the next era of search, talk to us. Two, we're going to start marketing in a meaningful way. More of our revenue has been PLG and organic and now we're going to be supplementing that with full-funnel marketing and GTM. Three, we're shipping. Fast. The product roadmap for the next 12 months is the most ambitious thing I've ever signed off on. ## A thank you To the customers who believed in us. To the team who've shipped more in a quarter than most companies ship in a year. To Headline, for moving quickly and backing us with conviction. To Freestyle, who led our seed in December and have backed us at every turn. To Arya and Sam, my co-founders, who upturned their lives to leave a successful company to move across the Atlantic and build with me. To my family and friends who continuously put up with the entrepreneurial madness. Search is going through a once-in-a-generation reset. The companies that adapt early will compound. The ones that don't will lose ground quietly, then loudly. If that's you, come find us at searchable.com. Chris **P.S.** You can read more about the round on [Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/searchable-secures-14m-headline-85m-130000392.html): ![Yahoo Finance: Searchable secures $14M from Headline at $85M valuation](https://www.searchable.com/yahoo-finance.png) --- [Back to Blog](https://www.searchable.com/blog) | [Searchable Homepage](https://www.searchable.com)