Ex-Google Engineer Launches Athena For AI Search Visibility

A former Google Search engineer is betting on the end of traditional SEO, and building tools to help marketers prepare for what comes next.

Andrew Yan, who left Google’s search team earlier this year, co-founded Athena, a startup focused on helping brands stay visible in AI-generated responses from tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

The company launched last month with $2.2 million in funding from Y Combinator and other venture firms.

Athena is part of a new wave of companies responding to a shift in how people discover information. Instead of…