AI Visibility Is Now a Capability You Can Buy
Basefy Innovation Lab has acquired Maxeo.ai, a platform measuring brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude. Reported as an ordinary acquisition, the calendar tells a different story: the platform was introduced in May and changed hands in August. Three months. A category finding a buyer at that speed indicates how quickly it is heating up.
Maxeo was developed by Turkey’s Softtech together with its Silicon Valley subsidiary Maxitech and launched as the first local platform defining the generative engine optimisation category in Turkey. Its function: measuring how often and in what context a brand appears in AI tools, analysing its position against competitors and producing insight to improve visibility. Financial terms were not disclosed.
This looks like a software story. What it says to a business is one sentence: if your competitor has started measuring visibility in AI answers and you have not, you do not know you are in the race.
What Happened
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- A category was defined in May
- Measurement has three dimensions
- Acquired in August
- Four platforms in scope
Two separate developments combine into one signal.
A category was defined in May
Softtech and Maxitech introduced Maxeo as the first local platform addressing generative engine optimisation systematically in Turkey. The stated aim was converting brand visibility in AI answers into a measurable and manageable performance area.
Measurement has three dimensions
The platform measures how often a brand appears in AI tools, in what context it is mentioned and where it stands relative to competitors. The question is not only whether you appear but how, and alongside whom.
Acquired in August
Basefy Innovation Lab, which builds and scales technology ventures, announced adding the platform to its portfolio. The financial details of the agreement were not shared.
Four platforms in scope
Measurement covers tools including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude — a list showing that the places consumers ask questions have moved beyond a single search box.
What the Numbers Mean
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- A three-month life is not a maturity signal
- What can be measured gets budgeted
- Competitive comparison is the real product
- The category name has not settled
There is no transaction figure here; there is a calendar and a category.
A three-month life is not a maturity signal
A platform acquired three months after launch indicates not that the product matured but that demand arrived quickly. Buyers evidently felt they had no time to wait for the category to grow.
What can be measured gets budgeted
An area that cannot be measured never enters a budget discussion. The moment AI visibility became measurable, a line opened in marketing budgets — and once a line opens, competition follows.
Competitive comparison is the real product
What platforms like this sell is not an absolute score but a relative position. The sentence “your competitor is recommended in this query and you are not” drives decisions faster than any technical report.
The category name has not settled
Generative engine optimisation, answer engine optimisation and AI visibility are used interchangeably for the same work. The unsettled naming reflects the field’s newness; the work itself is not ambiguous.
Who This Affects, and How
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- Those who gain
- Those who lose
- Those largely unaffected
- The indirect chain
Exposure depends on whether customers ask questions before buying.
Those who gain
Brands with clear product and service information and pages that answer questions directly. This group already ranks well once measurement begins and can defend the advantage with data. Categories involving comparison shopping — software, services, durable goods — are affected fastest.
Those who lose
Brands whose communication rests solely on advertising. There is no purchasable placement in this channel; visibility is earned through information quality. As measurement spreads, the assumption that we probably have some visibility becomes a measurable zero.
Those largely unaffected
Businesses working entirely through tenders and personal relationships are untouched today. As corporate buyers begin their preliminary research with these tools, however, the same mechanism arrives there too.
The indirect chain
A competitor starts measuring, sees the gap, corrects it, gets mentioned more often and receives more enquiries. You attribute your declining demand to the market. The party that does not measure also misattributes what it lost.
What to Do About It
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- Run the check yourself
- Answer questions on the page
- Produce comparison content
- Make measurement routine
All four are possible without buying a platform and all four help current search too.
Run the check yourself
Ask AI tools the five questions your customer would ask and see which brands are recommended. That ten-minute exercise delivers the first thing a report would tell you, free.
Answer questions on the page
These tools use content that corresponds directly to the question. If your product page lists features but does not answer which one suits me, you are not inside the answer.
Produce comparison content
Users ask AI tools comparison questions. Content honestly comparing your own products both answers those queries and dissolves purchase objections.
Make measurement routine
Repeat the same five questions quarterly and record the result. Without buying a platform you obtain a trend line, and the trend matters more than any single measurement.
The Digital Side
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- There are now two visibilities
- The preparation is shared
- Smaller brands can compete here
- Measurement culture is arriving here too
The existence of this category shows digital visibility splitting in two.
There are now two visibilities
One is ranking in search results, the other is being mentioned inside a generated answer. Both draw on the same foundation but are not the same thing: one has a rank, the other has presence or absence.
The preparation is shared
Both want the same thing: clear information, direct answers, consistent product data. Work done for this area is therefore not confined to one channel.
Smaller brands can compete here
With no purchasable placement, the budget gap matters less in this channel. In e-commerce and content consulting work it is the most balanced opportunity available to smaller brands.
Measurement culture is arriving here too
Most businesses that track advertising spend to the last unit keep no figure at all for this channel. Establishing measurement now means taking position before the category fills.
A Solid Digital Foundation
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- Question-and-answer structure aids reading
- Precise information beats vague information
- You need to be citable
- Same foundation, multiplying channels
Being cited inside an answer is directly related to how a page is written.
Question-and-answer structure aids reading
Where a page asks the question in a heading and answers it plainly underneath, both readers and systems can find and use that answer. How question-and-answer content should be structured is explained in the Google Search Central documentation. A page whose answer is buried does not get used as an answer.
Precise information beats vague information
Affordably priced can appear in no answer; starting from 1,200 per month can. These tools skip vague phrasing and quote precise information.
You need to be citable
Systems generating answers cite sources, and they prefer pages that are clear, current and clearly owned. Content without an author or date falls outside that selection.
Same foundation, multiplying channels
When a new search tool appears, preparation does not start again; the same clean information structure works there too. How that foundation is built is set out in our approach to digital consulting.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. The first stage of measurement can be done yourself: asking the tools your customers’ questions and recording the result is a sufficient starting point.
No. Ranking gives a list and a position; in a generated answer you are either mentioned or not. The preparation largely overlaps, the outcomes differ.
Most tools currently carry no purchasable ranking. Visibility is earned through information quality.
Those your sales team hears most. The sentences customers actually use produce more accurate results than guessed keywords.
Content corrections can take weeks to appear and vary by tool, which is why measurement should be periodic rather than one-off.
Yes, because position cannot be bought. The opportunity lasts until the category fills, so acting early makes the advantage durable.
Source: Basefy Innovation Lab announcement, reported by Webrazzi, 12 August 2026; Maxeo platform launch and statements by Softtech general manager M. Bülent Özçengel, May 2026.