{"id":1872,"date":"2026-07-01T13:36:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2026-07-01T13:36:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:36:35","slug":"search-is-getting-an-ai-overhaul-this-startup-says-it-can-help-e-commerce-brands-keep-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=1872","title":{"rendered":"Search is getting an AI overhaul. This startup says it can help e-commerce brands keep up."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Andrew Lissimore grew his e-commerce business, Headphones.com, by cracking search engine optimization (SEO).<\/p>\n

Read more Big Tech is spending billions to not employ people<\/a><\/p>\n

When ChatGPT emerged on the market, Lissimore prompted the LLM to see how the chatbot ranked his website’s audio equipment.<\/p>\n

“It didn’t reference us,” Lissimore told Business Insider.<\/p>\n

Search results for e-commerce brands, like his own, are a cornerstone for discovery, customer acquisition, and sales. Now, AI is changing how consumers seek product recommendations, from the rise of agentic commerce to how search engines like Google fundamentally work.<\/p>\n

“It’s the most important transition since search,” Lissimore said, which is why his new startup, Lantern, is doubling down on AI optimization for e-commerce brands. “I thought: people are going to be stuck grasping at straws, trying to figure out how to deal with this.”<\/p>\n

In 2024, Lissimore launched Lantern to help e-commerce brands strategize around customer loyalty. Lantern raised $3.1 million in seed funding in 2025, led by Salesforce Ventures.<\/p>\n

Since then, Lantern has refocused the company on tools that advise brands on how to get their products recommended more by LLMs. Lissimore also hired ex-Amazon engineers to redirect the company’s product. Lantern is raising more capital to expand its technical talent, bankroll tokens, and get its product out there.<\/p>\n

Lantern’s team trained an internal model that predicts how a brand’s products could appear in an AI-powered query, and what that brand could do to improve that visibility. The tools cost $99 a month, and for enterprise clients, that cost is customized.<\/p>\n

Read more What smart people are saying about the return of Anthropic\u2019s Fable 5<\/a><\/p>\n

As new terms like GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) take over, startups are rushing to the scene, offering tools to help brands optimize for AI.<\/p>\n

Jasper AI, for instance, raised over a hundred million at the start of the AI craze and has zeroed in on marketing tools. It recently launched a new automated GEO tool and offers several search-optimization features. Daydream, an SEO agency, raised a $15 million Series A funding round this year to scale its agentic SEO tools and hire humans who train it.<\/p>\n

To differentiate Lantern from the growing pool of AI-era marketing tools, Lissimore said the company is “focused purely on e-commerce.”<\/p>\n

While other products might help brands with “overall visibility,” Lissimore said, that matters less to niche e-commerce sellers. Instead, Lantern’s target client is concerned with individual products and how those perform relative to niche competitors.<\/p>\n

Lissimore knows he’s entering a potentially crowded market.<\/p>\n

“It looks like a lot of companies are bumping up against each other,” he said. “But, I think this space is going to be so huge and important that there will be a lot of companies, niches, and problems to solve that aren’t being solved yet.”<\/p>\n

Read the pitch deck that Lantern is using to sell its pivot as it raises more capital.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more How software engineers really feel about AI coding<\/a><\/p>\n

Note: Some details have been redacted.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Lantern kicks off its deck explaining a future with agentic shopping<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Then, it immediately introduces its founder<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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The deck explains how shopping is changing in the AI era<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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It then shows how Lantern works<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Next, it compares how marketing has grown beyond SEO<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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The deck then dives deeper into agentic commerce<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Lantern says its tools will help e-commerce brands ‘win AI recommendation’<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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It also explains how Lantern will adapt to shifting tech<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Lanterns says e-commerce brands will need to earn agents’ trust now<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Then the deck includes data outlining projections for AI commerce<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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It recaps how Lantern has already raised capital<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Then it introduces more of its team<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Finally, the deck closes by bringing it back to agentic shopping<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lantern launched a loyalty tool for e-commerce brands. Now, it’s doubling down on AI GEO and LLM result optimization. Read its pitch deck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nSearch is getting an AI overhaul. This startup says it can help e-commerce brands keep up. - American home journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=1872\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Search is getting an AI overhaul. 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