Growth Engineer

Petra Labs secures $5.2 million to connect AI Search to revenue for brands. Petra Labs announced a $5.2 million seed round led by Work-Bench, with participation from Afore and Pathlight, alongside strategic angel investors. 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 appear on those surfaces. Still, brands investing in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) face two core challenges. Solving the attribution challenge for AI Search. The first challenge is that the only signal most brands can point to is visibility, a metric that shows whether they appear in AI-generated answers, but not whether that visibility is driving revenue or acquiring new customers. That final stage of attribution is difficult to deliver with one-size-fits-all software, yet it is the most important insight brands need to allocate marketing spend effectively. Petra was built to close that gap by creating custom last-mile attribution models that connect a brand's AI search visibility to AI-referred traffic and revenue, allowing marketing teams to optimize investments 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. Turning AI visibility data into action. The second challenge is acting on the insights generated by AI visibility dashboards. It can be difficult to identify the right prompts to monitor and even harder to analyze the millions of rows of citation data they produce. Petra addresses this challenge by operating as an end-to-end partner, embedding a team of experts that works alongside a brand's internal team to define AI search strategies and execute them. The company is designed primarily for large enterprises with complex AEO initiatives requiring strategic guidance and execution. Company leadership. Petra Labs was founded by: * Sami Akkawi (CEO), who spent five years at Strategy& advising private equity firms across more than 50 acquisitions in marketing data, technology, and services. * Rishi Penmetcha (CTO), who specializes in building large-scale data systems and most recently developed AI agents at Traba. * Ramie Khoury (COO), who built and led Traba's growth team with a focus on enterprise sales and operations. Investor perspective. "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. To share your insights, please write to ABM at [email protected]

Provable Markets raises $7.5M for securities lending ATS. Key takeaways. * Provable Markets raised $7.5M toward a $13.5M offering for its securities lending infrastructure * Petra Labs closed a $5.2M Seed round led by Work-Bench for AI search optimization * Both rounds signal continued investor interest in fintech infrastructure and AI-native marketing tools Provable Markets, a fintech building trading infrastructure for securities lending, raised $7.5M according to an SEC filing disclosed today. The New York-based company operates an SEC-registered alternative trading system (ATS) for equity finance, and this close brings its total reported equity funding to $15.5M. Separately, Petra Labs announced a $5.2M Seed round for its AI search optimization platform, which helps enterprise brands track and attribute revenue from AI-generated answers. Advertisements What does Provable Markets actually do? Provable Markets provides infrastructure for securities lending and equity finance trading. In plain terms: when hedge funds borrow shares to short a stock, or when asset managers lend out shares to generate extra yield, the transaction often runs through opaque bilateral channels. Provable Markets built an ATS to make these trades more transparent and efficient. Matthew Cohen and Ruben de Vries founded the company in 2020. The SEC filing indicates the total offering size is $13.5M, with two investors participating in this close. The company has not disclosed who those investors are. Securities lending is a $3 trillion-plus market globally, dominated by a handful of large custodians and prime brokers. Startups have struggled to break in because the incumbents control both the supply (institutional lenders) and demand (hedge funds). Provable Markets' SEC registration gives it regulatory credibility, but the real test is whether it can aggregate enough liquidity to matter. Petra Labs bets on AI search visibility. Petra Labs raised $5.2M in Seed funding led by Work-Bench, with Afore Capital and Pathlight Ventures participating. Founded in 2025 by Sami Akkawi, Rishi Penmetcha, and Ramie Khoury, the company targets a new problem: how do brands appear in AI-generated answers, and can they tie that visibility to actual revenue? Traditional SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Clearscope focus on ranking in Google's blue links. Petra Labs focuses on a different interface: the AI answer boxes and summaries generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's own AI Overviews. As more users get answers without clicking through to websites, brands face a visibility problem that existing SEO stacks don't solve. Disclosure. Some links in this post are affiliate links - Logicity earns a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. Logicity Pvt Ltd only link products Logicity Pvt Ltd has used or actively recommend. Work-Bench, which led the round, focuses on enterprise software and has backed companies like Cockroach Labs and Catalyst. The fund's thesis often centers on infrastructure that enterprises will need regardless of which AI models win. AI search optimization fits that mold. Advertisements Comparing the two rounds. | Company | Amount Raised | Stage | Sector | Founded | Lead Investor | | Provable Markets | $7.5M (of $13.5M offering) | Not disclosed | Fintech / Securities Lending | 2020 | Not disclosed | | Petra Labs | $5.2M | Seed | AI / Marketing Tech | 2025 | Work-Bench | The rounds share a common thread: both companies are building infrastructure for markets undergoing structural change. Provable Markets targets the shift toward electronic, transparent securities lending. Petra Labs targets the shift from click-based search to AI-generated answers. What this signals for founders. Infrastructure bets require patience. Provable Markets has been at this for six years and is still raising sub-$20M rounds. That's not a criticism; securities lending is a slow-trust, high-stakes market where relationships take years to build. Founders considering regulated fintech should plan for long cycles. Petra Labs, by contrast, is moving fast into a category that barely existed 18 months ago. The risk is different: the AI search landscape could consolidate, shift, or fragment in ways that make today's optimization strategies obsolete. But the upside is that early movers in a new category can define it. Logicity's take. Provable Markets faces the classic fintech infrastructure challenge: it needs liquidity to attract participants, and participants to build liquidity. Six years in, a $7.5M raise suggests steady progress, not breakout traction. Petra Labs is the more speculative bet, building for a search paradigm that's still forming. If AI answers continue replacing traditional search clicks, demand for this tooling will spike. If Google claws back traffic or AI interfaces fragment, the market may not materialize. For founders watching: both deals show investors still have appetite for infrastructure plays, but the bar for 'why now' has gotten higher. Frequently asked questions. What is Provable Markets? Provable Markets is a fintech company that operates an SEC-registered alternative trading system for securities lending and equity finance transactions. How much has Provable Markets raised in total? The company has raised $15.5M in total reported equity funding, including the latest $7.5M close. What does Petra Labs do? Petra Labs provides an AI search optimization platform that helps enterprise brands track their visibility in AI-generated answers and attribute that visibility to revenue. Who invested in Petra Labs? Work-Bench led the $5.2M Seed round, with participation from Afore Capital and Pathlight Ventures. When was Petra Labs founded? Petra Labs was founded in 2025 by Sami Akkawi, Rishi Penmetcha, and Ramie Khoury. Need help implementing this? If you're a founder building in fintech infrastructure or AI-native marketing tools and want to discuss go-to-market strategy or fundraising positioning, reach out to the Logicity team. Logicity Pvt Ltd connect founders with operators who've scaled in these categories. Advertisements Manaal Khan Tech & Innovation Writer Produced with AI assistance and reviewed by the Logicity editorial team. Learn more in its Editorial Policy.