Sitecore has announced the acquisition of Scrunch, an AI customer experience platform focused on helping brands understand and improve how they appear in AI-generated search results and answers. The acquisition comes as AI-powered search experiences and large language models increasingly shape how buyers research products, compare vendors and make purchasing decisions.
The transaction combines Scrunch’s AI search visibility and optimization capabilities with Sitecore’s AI-powered digital experience platform to help organizations manage, optimize and distribute content across AI ecosystems and digital channels.
As AI-generated answers continue to influence online discovery, organizations are facing new challenges around how their brands are represented within AI systems.
According to Sitecore, buyers are increasingly forming opinions about brands before visiting company websites, relying instead on AI-generated recommendations, summaries and citations during the research process.
This shift has created growing demand for tools that help enterprises monitor where they appear in AI answers, identify gaps in representation and improve how AI systems interpret and surface their content.
Scrunch provides visibility into where brand messaging appears, where competitors are mentioned and where AI-generated answers may misrepresent or omit brand information.
The acquisition integrates Scrunch’s Agent Experience Platform (AXP), analytics and recommendation capabilities with Sitecore’s SitecoreAI digital experience platform.
The combined offering is designed to help enterprises:
Organizations can analyze how their brands appear across AI-driven search and answer platforms, including large language models and AI assistants.
Scrunch’s AXP technology formats content in ways that AI agents and language models can interpret and utilize without disrupting the customer-facing user experience.
The integration enables actionable AI search optimization recommendations to be incorporated directly into SitecoreAI content management, digital asset management and marketing workflows.
Sitecore stated that the combined platform helps organizations improve traffic, brand authority and conversion performance by ensuring AI systems surface accurate and trusted content.
"AI has changed buyer behavior forever. We're at a pivotal moment where companies must rethink traditional digital strategies and accept that the internet must be written for machines to understand if we want humans to experience it," said Eric Stine, Chief Executive Officer of Sitecore. "With Scrunch, we enable our customers to understand how they are represented in AI-generated answers and automatically act on those insights, maximizing how they reach, engage, and serve their customers. We're helping brands show up with greater clarity, authority, and relevance so they can build trust, increase share of voice, and influence decisions early in the buying journey when it matters most."
Sitecore noted that the acquisition supports a broader industry transition from traditional search engine optimization toward AI-focused answer engine optimization strategies.
Scrunch’s platform is designed to move beyond website-focused optimization by surfacing insights across broader enterprise content ecosystems and AI search environments.
"Control of the brand narrative is shifting, and customers are increasingly trusting AI to define brands, rather than the organizations behind those brands," said Chris Andrew, Chief Executive Officer of Scrunch, a Sitecore company. "By joining forces, we're helping companies meet buyers where they are, moving beyond traditional SEO to win inside AI-generated answers. That's where Scrunch's AXP is a critical advantage, delivering content in a format AI agents can read and use, without disrupting the human experience, allowing brands to become the trusted sources that power those answers."
Sitecore highlighted several customer examples demonstrating measurable outcomes from Scrunch’s AI optimization capabilities.
Akamai reported that AXP-enabled webpages achieved a 364% increase in brand presence for non-branded prompts and a 218% increase in citations within AI-generated results.
Runpod also reported a 400% increase in paying customers after using Scrunch to identify AI search rendering and indexing issues affecting discoverability.
"At Perficient, we're building an AI-first marketing engine focused on speed, relevance, and real impact," said Carrie Grapenthin, Chief Marketing Officer of Perficient. "As a customer and partner of both Sitecore and Scrunch, this combination is an exciting opportunity for our team. Insight without action isn't enough. Scrunch helps us see where our brand is showing up, where gaps exist, and what needs to improve. Sitecore helps us act on those insights across the content and experiences we already manage, so we can move faster and deliver differentiated content in our unique brand voice."
Sitecore stated that the acquisition will help enterprises continuously optimize content visibility, engagement and performance across AI-powered discovery environments.
About Sitecore
Sitecore is a global leader in AI-enabled digital experience software. Its next-generation platform, SitecoreAI, helps brands plan, create, personalize, and deliver content across every channel — websites, apps, social, and beyond. By unifying content management, customer data, and personalization into one intelligent system, it makes marketing faster, smarter, and more connected. At its core are agentic tools and studios that let marketers and developers collaborate with AI responsibly and effectively.
Trusted by thousands of global brands and supported by one of the world's largest digital experience communities, Sitecore helps organizations design experiences for the world beyond the website, with the flexibility of customizable SaaS and the scale of a global ecosystem. Discover more at sitecore.com.
About Scrunch
Scrunch, a Sitecore Company, is an enterprise-grade platform that empowers businesses to understand and optimize their presence in AI search. Trusted by 500+ leading brands and agencies, Scrunch provides a comprehensive suite of tools to assess competitive positioning, pinpoint content gaps, and optimize websites for AI search and retrieval, ensuring brands remain relevant in the evolving AI landscape.
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