Vested, the leading marketing and communications agency dedicated to financial services, has announced a strategic partnership with Scrunch AI, a pioneering platform that enables businesses to monitor, analyze, and optimize how their brands appear in AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Meta AI, and more. With millions of people getting advice and recommendations from AI and preferring answers instead of links, this collaboration will help financial brands maintain maximum visibility and authority in the evolving AI-driven search landscape.

The partnership builds on Vested's investment in VestTech, a proprietary incubator for AI research, development, and the evaluation of emerging AI tools. Since its creation, VestTech has vetted dozens of platforms, with Scrunch AI emerging as a clear fit to support client goals around AI visibility, semantic clarity, and content structuring.

“AI is transforming how people find, evaluate, and buy financial services,” said Binna Kim, Group Vested CEO. “It’s no longer just about Google’s keyword search rankings. Financial firms must now consider how their brands appear in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity based on millions of questions and prompts being fed daily into AI search models. Through our work with Scrunch AI, we’re helping brands become the source AI platforms cite, trust, and surface first.”

"Your website doesn't need to go away, but 90% of its human traffic will," said Chris Andrew, co-founder and CEO of Scrunch AI. "AI agents are the new gatekeepers and Vested understands how high the stakes are for financial brands. Together, we’re making sure they show up, stand out, and earn trust in the era of AI search."

AI-led discovery is reshaping the online search landscape, particularly in high-trust and highly regulated industries like finance. As AI-generated overviews and summaries increasingly replace traditional link-based results, financial brands face a growing risk of becoming invisible unless they optimize their content and media channels for AI engines. Vested’s approach focuses on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): creating structured, expert-led content aligned with how AI platforms source and display information.

Through the partnership, Vested and Scrunch AI will offer:

• Valuable research and thought leadership, including webinars, exclusive events, and surveys to share knowledge and educate the market about the evolution of AEO and its impact on brand visibility and authority
• AI search audits to assess how brands appear across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity
• Schema and structured content development to increase AI citations
• Digital reputation and authority building via PR, SME-led content, and credible third-party mentions
• Ongoing monitoring to track brand performance and correct misinformation across platforms

Scrunch AI recently announced that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Decibel, with participation from Mayfield, Homebrew, and several other notable investors to build the infrastructure for AI-native marketing and the first AI customer experience platform. The raise reinforces the belief that the way brands show up in AI-driven environments will define the next era of marketing.

Already, several of Vested’s clients are benefiting from these AI-optimized strategies, with more activations in the pipeline for Q4 and beyond.

About Vested

Vested is an integrated communications and marketing firm at the forefront of the rapidly evolving financial sector. Vested’s approach merges deep financial expertise with creativity and an obsessive commitment to creating value for clients through ideas and action. The agency, which has offices in New York and London, operates an investment group, Vested Ventures. Learn more at www.fullyvested.com, or via Twitter and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250905789448/en/

As AI-generated overviews and summaries increasingly replace traditional link-based results, financial brands face a growing risk of becoming invisible unless they optimize their content and media channels for AI engines.