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What’s on tap today:
Podcast
Our interview with Barak Ben
Weekly Headline Recap
What's trending in AI this week
Community Update
How Homebase Helps You
🎙️ This Week’s Interview
AI Founder Story
Building Brand Visibility for the LLM Era
Quick Background
What happens when Google traffic plummets, AI dominates search, and traditional SEO can’t keep up? This was the burning question for Barak Ben Noon, veteran software engineer (ex-Google, BlackRock), who, together with Daniel Siryakov, set out to give brands the missing keys to LLM visibility.
Why LLM Visibility Now?
Every CMO fears a blind spot: 80%+ of searches today are “zero-click” — users get answers, but brands don’t even know they’ve been mentioned. With ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others leading the new search paradigm, most brands have no way to measure, influence, or optimize what LLMs are saying about them.
The Anvil Playbook
Barak’s answer: Anvil — a suite that lets teams monitor brand mentions in LLMs, benchmark against competitors, and orchestrate content strategies tailored for this new kind of “search engine.” Reddit and Wikipedia become more than forums: they’re strategic battlegrounds where small brands can outsmart giants, if they know exactly where to strike.
Key Achievements & Insights:
The Problem Today →
Most companies are invisible at the very moment AI models answer their customers’ questions. Brands don’t know when or why they appear in ChatGPT or Gemini responses — or, worse, why their competitors do instead.
The Breakthrough →
Anvil flips this script: it scans millions of LLM queries, shows which brands are getting cited, and reveals the precise posts or wiki pages driving those citations. Suddenly, influence is measurable. Small “golden eggs” — one post, one wiki edit — can level the playing field against massive competitors.
The Proof Story →
Barak shared how one client leapt from a 1% to 10% LLM mention rate in weeks by fine-tuning content and targeting authors whose blogs influence AI answers. Anvil made those invisible levers visible — and actionable.
The Big Example →
Forget buying 100K backlinks; now, strategic Reddit and Wikipedia engagement can sling a niche player past household names in AI-generated recommendations. Classic SEO rules—volume and backlinks—are no longer king; high authority, quality, and true expertise win the LLM game.
Why It Matters
In a world where your product is invisible unless an AI says your name, Anvil promises that influence is no longer a black box reserved for the biggest budgets. Every product team gains an edge in LLM visibility, armed with data and strategy, not guesses.
Watch the full interview below! 👇
The Ultimate Lesson
Navigate the LLM Landscape
Barak’s biggest lesson: treat AI search and LLMs like a new continent. The metrics, the strategies, the rules — all rewritten. Only those that learn to track, optimize, and authentically engage where AIs “listen” will survive and thrive.
Quality Still Wins, But Targeted
Don’t churn out a sea of bland AI-written content or fake engagement. Rigor, relevance, and tuned knowledge-sharing—especially in authentic community channels like Reddit and Wikipedia, where Anvil can guide every step—are now the true kingmakers.
See how Barak, Daniel, and Anvil are rewriting the playbook for LLM-first visibility—discover the strategies and micro-wins that C-level leaders are quietly using to own their category — Read the full interview →
HEADLINE ROUNDUP
Headline recap
OpenAI Skyrockets to $500B Valuation
OpenAI reaches a massive $500 billion valuation after a $6.6 billion share sale involving SoftBank and other investors.
Meta Acquires AI Chip Maker Rivos
Meta bolsters its AI hardware efforts with the strategic acquisition of chip startup Rivos.
OpenAI Challenges TikTok & YouTube
OpenAI launches a new video generator app, entering the crowded social video platform space.
Ex-Sequoia Partner Launches $400M AI Fund
Matt Miller starts Evantic, a $400 million fund targeting B2B AI startups across three continents.
Google Commits $1B to AI in Higher Education
Google invests $1 billion and hires faculty to deepen AI ties between academia and industry.
TRENDS
What's trending in AI
Retell AI
Key Player: Founded in 2023, Retell AI is led by CEO Bing Wu, the team brings deep expertise in conversational AI and enterprise tech, aiming to build voice agents that sound indistinguishably human.
Market Value: The company has secured $4.6M in seed funding from Y Combinator and top-tier investors. While its valuation is undisclosed, Retell is actively positioning itself in the booming AI voice market, projected to surpass $3B by 2028.
Adoption: Retell’s AI agents are already live in telehealth, logistics, and BPOs, helping companies manage high call volumes with minimal human involvement.
Recent Developments: In mid-2025, Retell was featured by OpenAI for its use of GPT‑4o, followed by a major product update enabling voice, SMS, and chat integration, along with real-time CRM syncing.
Growth: Since May 2025, Retell AI has experienced a +9800% spike in search interest, hitting 27.1K monthly searches. This growth reflects skyrocketing attention from the AI and SaaS communities, pushing it into the spotlight as one of the year’s breakout startups.
Why It Matters: Retell enables companies to cut support costs by up to 80%, while achieving industry-leading NPS scores (~90). Its agents don’t just answer — they listen, respond naturally, and learn with time. The result: faster resolution, happier customers, and scalable support that doesn’t break the bank.
The Big Picture: We’re moving toward a world where AI voice agents are always on, always available, and speak like us. Retell AI is at the forefront of this shift — transforming customer service from a cost center to a competitive advantage.
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