Petra Labs Raises $5.2M to Connect AI Search to Revenue for Enterprise Brands

Petra is the end-to-end AEO partner for enterprise brands, combining software with hands-on execution, including the category's first custom AI search attribution models.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Petra Labs announced a $5.2 million seed round led by Work-Bench, with participation from Afore and Pathlight, alongside strategic angels.

Over the past year, brands have watched more of their customer discovery and site traffic shift to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Many now track their presence across the prompts that matter to them and have invested heavily to improve how they show up on those surfaces. Still, brands investing in AEO face two core problems.

The first is that the only signal most brands can point to is visibility, a metric that shows whether you're appearing in AI answers, but not whether that presence is driving revenue or new customers. That last mile of attribution is difficult to deliver in one-size-fits-all software, yet it's the most important insight brands need to allocate their spend efficiently. Petra was built to close that gap, with custom last-mile attribution models that tie a brand's AI search visibility to AI-referred traffic and revenue, so teams can allocate spend intelligently in real time.

"We built Petra Labs to serve as an extension of our customers’ teams and own AI Search business outcomes end-to-end. From day 1, it was clear to us that the only way to deliver on that promise was to truly understand how these AI search investments translate to revenue," said Sami Akkawi, CEO & Co-Founder at Petra Labs.

The second problem is acting on what the data shows in the AI visibility dashboards. It's difficult to choose the right prompts to track, and even harder to make sense of the millions of rows of citation data they produce. This is where Petra operates as an end-to-end partner: it embeds a team of experts who work as an extension of the brand's own team, setting the AI search strategy and executing on it. Petra works best with large brands whose AEO initiatives carry complex considerations.

Petra Labs was founded by Sami Akkawi (CEO), Rishi Penmetcha (CTO), and Ramie Khoury (COO). Akkawi spent five years at Strategy& advising private equity firms across more than 50 acquisitions in marketing data, technology, and services. Penmetcha spent his career building large-scale data systems, most recently building AI agents at Traba, where Khoury built and led the growth team, with a focus on enterprise sales and operations.

"Every marketing channel eventually has to prove its return, and AI search will be no different. For enterprise brands deploying millions of dollars across channels, effective and detailed attribution is crucial. Petra is the first AI search team we have seen that ties AI visibility software insights directly to revenue and owns the end-to-end process for their customers. That combination of measurement rigor and outcomes-based work is why we led this round," said Jessica Lin, Co-Founder and General Partner at Work-Bench.

About Petra Labs

Petra Labs is the end-to-end answer engine optimization (AEO) partner for enterprise brands. Petra pairs a proprietary measurement platform with an embedded team of AEO experts who run strategy and execution, and builds custom last-mile attribution models that tie AI search to revenue. Founded in 2025, Petra is based in New York City. Learn more at petralabs.com.