Artificial intelligence is changing how people search for information online, and a new startup wants to help small businesses keep up. The startup, called Hall, has raised $2 million in early funding to build tools for this new way of online marketing.
Hall was started in 2023 by Kai Forsyth, a former designer at Dovetail and Atlassian. The funding round was led by Blackbird, a well-known investment firm.
Hall is working on helping businesses get noticed in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Claude by Anthropic. These chatbots are changing how people find products and services online.
A recent study by the Pew Research Centre found that people are clicking less on the links shown in AI-generated search summaries. This has caused a drop in website traffic and is being called “The Great Decoupling” — where traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization), once a huge $80+ billion industry, is losing its impact.
Right now, most businesses still rely on tools like Google Search Console, but Forsyth and Hall believe there’s a better way to help small businesses succeed in this new AI-powered search world.
Hall will use the $2 million to build tools that help businesses manage their marketing as AI becomes the main way people discover products and services.
Founder Kai Forsyth says that when people ask for AI tools—like ChatGPT or Google Gemini—for things like restaurant suggestions or software options, they’re skipping traditional search engines. But right now, businesses can’t see how they show up in these AI responses. If the AI recommends a competitor or gives the wrong information about their product, they have no way to fix it or understand why it happened.
Hall aims to solve that problem. It’s building tools that help companies see how they appear in AI platforms, track how those mentions lead to real business results, and improve their visibility in AI-generated answers.
“The shift from centralised search to distributed AI discovery is just beginning. This creates an entirely new performance marketing channel with different rules, different optimisation strategies, and different success metrics,” Forsyth said.
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