From backing the vision to celebrating its next chapter! 📷 Investments are about more than capital and disproportionate returns. They’re about believing in a founder, a bold vision, and the opportunity to create an entirely new category. When SoftBank Vision Fund led the last investment in Eightfold, we believed deeply in Ashutosh Garg’s vision of using AI to unlock human potential and fundamentally transform how the world thinks about talent. It’s been incredible to watch that vision evolve. And now, another exciting milestone as Joe Korngiebel , former CTO of Workday, takes the helm as CEO. A special moment connecting with Ashutosh, Joe and Meghna Punhani, CHRO, as Eightfold enters this exciting new chapter! 📷 Congratulations, Joe! And a special shoutout to Ashutosh for building something truly remarkable and setting the stage for its next chapter in his new role as Chairman of the Board. At a time where AI is changing every career as we know it, the mission “the right career for everyone in the world,” has never been more important. Here’s to the next chapter of Eightfold! #EightfoldAI #Leadership #AI #FutureOfWork

Does your data structure determine your AI visibility? Or are marketers asking too narrow a question? That was at the heart of our discussion at the MMA Global's Great Debates: GEO-AEO last week. Content structure, metadata, and technical optimization absolutely matter. But I believe the bigger opportunity lies in understanding how AI shapes consumer decisions, and what brands can actually do to influence those decisions. During the panel, I shared findings from OptimizeGEO's research across 40,000 unbranded shopping queries and 12 consumer categories: 📷 72% of cited sources were editorial publishers, while brand websites accounted for only about one in seven citations. 📷 More than 15% of brands were described inaccurately by ChatGPT, including outdated prices and discontinued products. 📷 Three out of four AI shopping shelves directed consumers to retailers, rather than brands' own websites. These findings reinforce something I've believed for some time: AI discovery cannot be solved through website optimization alone. We need to understand how different consumer personas discover and evaluate brands, identify the right opportunities across paid, earned, and owned media, and most importantly, turn those insights into action. That's why we're building @OptimizeGEO to go beyond visibility measurement, combining persona-based intelligence, actionable marketing recommendations, and AI agents that help execute those recommendations at scale. Because ultimately, AI visibility is not the business outcome. Growth is. MMA's Great Debates brought together perspectives that are helping push the industry beyond traditional SEO thinking and toward a more comprehensive understanding of AI discovery. Michael Pettiette, Hassan Khater, Alec Foster, Amanda Hyland, Moneka Khurana, Ranjana K. - Great to see you leading from the front always! The full conversation is available at the link in comments. As AI becomes a bigger part of the consumer journey, are marketers thinking broadly enough about how to influence it? #AIDiscovery #FutureofMarketing #GenerativeEngineOptimization #MarketingStrategy #OptimizeGEO

“There may not actually be a search page.” This take from Michael Kassan, Founder and CEO 3C Ventures, Founder MediaLink, regarding AI search raises a question I’m looking forward to discussing with him: what does that mean for how brands get discovered and chosen? Michael, Jim Louderback, and I are kicking off The AI Discovery Growth Room, our new LinkedIn Live series about turning AI discovery into brand growth. Jim, Editor and CEO, Inside the Creator Economy, media strategist and moderator extraordinaire will facilitate. We’ll talk about what Michael is hearing behind closed doors, how AI is changing influence, what this means for brands and creators, his track record of backing early entrepreneurs, and why he chose to invest in OptimizeGEO. October 19 at 4:30 EST. Q: We’d love your questions! See you soon. #LinkedInLive #FutureofMarketing #AIDiscovery #OptimizeGEO #CreatorEconomy

People are increasingly turning to AI with questions about their health. That creates an entirely new challenge and even bigger opportunity for brands. Nidhi and I had the opportunity to spend time with the team at Boehringer Ingelheim discussing what this shift means, and how visibility, media, and commerce are converging in the AI discovery era. Thank you to the amazing Boehringer Ingelheim team for hosting this important conversation, and to 3C Ventures and @MKassan, Greg Safran, @jschulweis, @KarnaCrawford, Sydney Kaplan for facilitating. @OptimizeGEO has been building for this moment and learning so much along the way, and we are glad to share these to help Boehringer Ingelheim’s iconic brands thrive in this new era of consumer discovery. An honor to have the opportunity to partner with brands that are saving lives every day. #HealthcareMarketing #DigitalHealth #AISearch #FutureOfMarketing

The invisible work behind visible success Building a category before there is a category. I have flashbacks to conversations with brands and creators about why they need to be on social media when there were 8M people on social media and 600M people watching TV. Today, it’s the same conversation about why AI visibility, advertising and commerce matter in the age of AI discovery when the percentage of leads may still be small and/or not fully attributable. The work done to educate, to build trust, to steel yourself through uncertainty and stay rooted in the vision is my “invisible behind the visible.” Passing the mic to the very inspiring Parul Kapoor and the ever-fearless Nidhi Gupta! Same question! Neythri.org's Summit is October 10 in Palo Alto. Link in the comments. Thank you, Rohini Tolani Sadarangani, Isha Chauhan, Deepali Paul and Supriya Gujral for pushing me to start this chain. #PassTheMic #NthPower Pic from last week's announcement: "OptimizeGEO.ai Surpasses 100 Global Brands across 20 Countries as Michael Kassan Invests in Its Next Phase of Expansion." The visible success driven by the invisible work.

The conversations I’m eager to have at Advertising Week New York this week: how do we turn AI discovery into a reason for someone to choose our brand? How are discovery, advertising and commerce converging to drive measurable growth? Being mentioned in an AI answer is a start. But how your brand is understood, when it’s recommended, and what you do to improve that experience deserve much more attention. That’s a big part of why we’re building @OptimizeGEO, and I’m looking forward to hearing how fellow marketers are approaching this shift. If you’ll be there, let’s connect. Looking forward to great conversations and co-creating the future of marketing in the AI-discovery era. Q; What’s top of mind for you this year at Advertising Week New York? @casaurabhdoshi #AWNewYork #AIDiscovery #AISearch #GenerativeEngineOptimization #FutureOfMarketing

Straight from the New York Stock Exchange in conversation with @KristenScholer. Three things every business and brand leader needs to be thinking about right now: 1. How AI is influencing purchase decisions before a consumer ever clicks a link. 2. What consumers are actually searching for, and what that means for where your business needs to show up. 3. And why the global shift to GEO is not a trend to watch. It is a decision to make. What is the one question about AI discovery you would want answered? @OptimizeGEO #NYSE #GEO #AISearch #OptimizeGEO #FutureOfMarketing