Sitecore Acquires Scrunch as AI Search Becomes the New Front Door
Sitecore acquires Scrunch to strengthen AI search visibility, AEO, and GEO capabilities as enterprise discovery shifts toward AI-generated answers.
Sitecore has acquired Scrunch, an AI customer experience platform that helps brands understand and improve how they appear across AI-driven search and answer engines. The acquisition brings Scrunch's Agent Experience Platform (AXP) and AI search visibility technology into Sitecore's digital experience ecosystem. Financial terms were not officially disclosed, although Bloomberg reported the transaction was valued at approximately $225M.
The deal matters because customer discovery is increasingly happening inside AI-generated answers from platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews rather than through traditional website visits. For the broader market, the acquisition signals that Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are rapidly moving from experimental marketing concepts into enterprise technology priorities.
What Happened
Sitecore announced the acquisition of Scrunch, a fast-growing AI customer experience company focused on helping brands understand, measure, and improve their visibility across AI-generated search experiences. Founded by Chris Andrew and Robert MacCloy, Scrunch emerged from a simple observation: consumers increasingly receive answers before they ever click a link. That shift changes how brands are discovered, evaluated, and ultimately selected.
Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Scrunch built technology to help organizations monitor how AI systems describe their products, cite their content, and position them against competitors. Its flagship Agent Experience Platform (AXP) creates machine-readable content layers designed to improve how large language models retrieve, interpret, and cite brand information.
For Sitecore, one of the largest enterprise digital experience platform (DXP) providers, the acquisition adds a capability that sits upstream from traditional digital experience management. Sitecore historically helped enterprises optimize experiences once customers arrived on owned digital properties, while Scrunch focuses on the moment before arrival, when AI systems increasingly act as gatekeepers of attention. A growing number of buying journeys now begin and end inside AI-generated responses, making the implications of this acquisition far more significant than a typical product expansion.
Why This Matters
For nearly 2 decades, marketers competed for clicks. Search engine optimization became a massive industry, content strategies were built around rankings, and entire teams existed to win visibility on search results pages. AI is changing the shape of that battlefield. When a user asks ChatGPT for the best cybersecurity platform, cloud infrastructure provider, fintech solution, or enterprise software vendor, they are often presented with an answer instead of a list of links.
That creates a new challenge. Brands no longer compete solely for search rankings. They compete for inclusion inside machine-generated recommendations. Sitecore's acquisition of Scrunch recognizes that reality. The transaction is not simply about adding another software product. It is about repositioning Sitecore closer to where customer decisions increasingly begin.
In practical terms, Scrunch gives enterprises visibility into how AI systems perceive and present their brands while providing mechanisms to improve those outcomes through AI Search Visibility, AEO, and GEO initiatives. That combination of monitoring and optimization is what makes the acquisition strategically significant.
Market Context
The rise of AI search has created one of the fastest-emerging categories in modern marketing technology. Terms like AEO and GEO barely existed in mainstream enterprise conversations a few years ago. Today, boards, CMOs, and digital leaders are beginning to ask the same question: How does AI describe our company?
The question sounds simple, but it is not. AI systems synthesize information from multiple sources, interpret context, evaluate relevance, and generate responses that may influence purchasing decisions before a prospect ever visits a website. That means visibility is no longer just a traffic problem. It is a representation problem. AI Search Visibility measures how frequently and accurately a company appears in AI-generated answers across platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
Scrunch positioned itself directly at the center of this emerging market. Founded in 2023 and acquired in 2026, the company grew to more than 500 brands and agencies, raised $26M from investors including Mayfield, Decibel Partners, Homebrew, and GTM Capital, and expanded to roughly 74 employees. Those numbers matter because they reflect demand emerging before the category itself has fully matured. Investors were not funding yesterday's market. They were funding tomorrow's discovery layer.
Competitive Landscape
Sitecore's acquisition arrives as enterprise software vendors race to establish relevance in an AI-first environment. The competitive pressure is coming from multiple directions. Traditional digital experience platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager, Optimizely, and Contentful are expanding AI capabilities. Marketing technology vendors are investing heavily in AI-driven optimization, while search-focused platforms including Yext and BrightEdge are evolving beyond traditional SEO into AI visibility management.
Meanwhile, AI-native startups continue building specialized tools designed to help brands navigate the growing influence of large language models. The strategic challenge for enterprises is fragmentation. Marketing teams already manage content systems, customer data platforms, analytics platforms, personalization tools, and search solutions. Adding AI visibility management as a separate workflow introduces additional complexity.
Sitecore's thesis appears straightforward: integrate AI search visibility directly into existing content and experience workflows. If successful, that approach could provide enterprises with a more unified way to manage both human-facing and machine-facing digital experiences.
What This Signals
The acquisition of Scrunch sends a message that extends far beyond Sitecore. It signals that AI-generated answers are becoming a recognized layer of digital infrastructure. The internet spent years optimizing for humans. Now organizations must also optimize for machines that increasingly mediate human decisions.
That does not mean websites disappear. It means the journey changes. Discovery happens differently, evaluation happens differently, and influence happens differently. Every major platform shift creates new winners, new categories, and new assumptions about how markets work.
The companies that recognized mobile early built advantages. The companies that understood cloud early built advantages. The companies that understand AI-mediated discovery early may be building the next advantage right now.
The Bigger Industry Shift
Technology history tends to follow a familiar pattern. A new interface emerges, user behavior changes, and infrastructure follows. The browser changed behavior. The smartphone changed behavior. AI assistants are changing behavior.
Sitecore's acquisition of Scrunch is ultimately a bet on that progression. The transaction reflects a broader belief that AI-generated answers will become an increasingly important layer between brands and customers. For enterprise leaders, the lesson is not that SEO is dead. The lesson is that visibility itself is evolving.
Whenever visibility changes, markets tend to follow. Organizations that understand how AI systems interpret, retrieve, and present information may find themselves better positioned for the next phase of digital competition than those still optimizing exclusively for traditional search behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Scrunch?
Scrunch is a Salt Lake City, Utah-based AI customer experience platform that helps brands measure and improve visibility across AI-generated search and answer engines. The company focuses on helping organizations understand how AI systems describe, cite, and recommend their products and services.
Who founded Scrunch?
Scrunch was founded by Chris Andrew, CEO, and Robert MacCloy, CTO, in 2023. Both founders previously helped navigate an earlier platform shift during their time at Hearsay Systems.
What is Sitecore?
Sitecore is an enterprise digital experience platform (DXP) provider offering content management, personalization, digital asset management, and customer experience software for global enterprises. The company serves organizations looking to manage and optimize digital customer interactions at scale.
Why did Sitecore acquire Scrunch?
Sitecore acquired Scrunch to strengthen its AI search visibility, AEO, and GEO capabilities as customer discovery increasingly shifts toward AI-generated answers. The acquisition expands Sitecore's ability to help brands influence how they appear before a customer ever reaches a website.
How much did Sitecore pay for Scrunch?
Financial terms were not officially disclosed. Bloomberg reported the acquisition was valued at approximately $225M, but neither Sitecore nor Scrunch publicly confirmed the amount.
What is the Agent Experience Platform (AXP)?
AXP is Scrunch's platform for creating machine-readable content structures that help AI systems retrieve, interpret, and cite brand information more accurately. The technology is designed to improve how large language models understand and reference company content.
What is AI Search Visibility?
AI Search Visibility measures how frequently and accurately a company appears in AI-generated answers from platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It is becoming an increasingly important metric as AI-driven discovery grows.
What does this acquisition mean for the market?
The deal signals growing enterprise demand for AEO and GEO capabilities and highlights the increasing importance of AI-generated answers in customer discovery and decision-making. It also reinforces the idea that AI-mediated discovery is becoming a new layer of digital infrastructure for modern businesses.
