Athena didn’t just come out of stealth, they cracked the code on visibility in a world where the algorithm doesn’t care how much you spent on Google Ads last quarter.
Founded by Andrew Yan and Alan Yao, Athena is dropping heat in the AI-powered search arms race, and $2.2 million in fresh seed capital is the kindling. Y Combinator, FCVC, Red Bike Capital, Amino Capital, Eli Schwartz, Ashley Stirrup, and a posse of sharp angels saw what was coming and placed their bets early. You don’t invest in the future of search, you invest in the team that understands it.
Andrew Yan watched the tectonic plates shift from inside the Google search bunker. He helped design the very machine that is now phasing out traditional SEO. And instead of fighting the tide, he rode it. Alan Yao, engineering sniper, built in AI when the world thought GPT-2 was a party trick. Together, they birthed Athena, a generative engine optimization (GEO) platform that’s already got Coupons.com, Checkr, Artisan, and Ollie claiming real estate at the top of the ChatGPT subconscious.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t your cousin’s keyword play. GEO is what happens when you realize traffic is no longer just organic, it’s ontological. Athena is mapping 3M+ AI responses across 300K+ sites, pinpointing how LLMs think, and recommending exact changes, text, image, video, to ensure your brand shows up, shows out, and sticks around. And they’re doing this with a five-person squad in SF. Five. With traction that’s compounding like it’s playing the Fed.
One client? 38.85% monthly lead growth and 1,561% ROI in under 3 weeks. Another? 10x ChatGPT traffic and deeper user engagement than a late-night Reddit thread. A third? 36% Share of Voice on ChatGPT, while their competition fumbled the prompt.
Athena doesn’t care if you’re Fortune 500 or just launched your Series A. If your brand isn’t showing up in AI-generated search, you’re invisible. And invisibility doesn’t convert.
The GEO market is sitting on a fault line, $80B worth of SEO is up for grabs as AI eats traditional search alive. Forrester says 90% of B2B buyers are already Gen AI-native. Google search volume? Expected to drop 50% by 2028. Athena isn’t predicting the future, they’re building the infrastructure for it.
Props to Andrew Yan and Alan Yao for turning stealth into signal. To Rachel Ten Brink and the Red Bike team for betting on brains and velocity. And to the marketers out there wondering why their brand keeps getting ghosted by ChatGPT, Athena’s not your fix. It’s your cheat code.
The question isn’t “What does Athena do?” It’s “What happens to everyone who doesn’t use it?”