Profound vs. Peec AI: Two New York Events, Two Different AEO Communities

Over the past several weeks, I attended events hosted by both companies. I have been a paying customer of both companies. Neither sponsored this article, reviewed it in advance or asked me to write it.

Profound vs Peec AI: September 2026 Comparison

Both companies operate in what is increasingly called Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO: the attempt to understand and influence how brands surface in answers generated by artificial intelligence.

For marketers, the premise is straightforward. Consumers who once searched Google for a product, service or recommendation are increasingly asking an AI system a question instead. If those systems become a meaningful layer between consumers and brands, marketers will want to know what the models are saying, which sources they are citing and why certain companies appear while others do not.

Profound and Peec both sell software designed to make that process measurable.

	Profound	Peec AI
Founded	New York, 2024	Berlin, 2025
Funding raised	More than $300 million	About $29 million
Market position	Positioned aggressively at the enterprise end of the market	Entered the market later; a comparatively simpler product at lower price points
Customers include	Target, Walmart, Figma, U.S. Bank	Hugo Boss, Chanel, Squarespace, Wix
Product scope	Expanded beyond visibility tracking into agent analytics, content workflows and prompt data	Visibility tracking, sources and sentiment
New York presence	Headquarters	New office, currently heavily focused on go-to-market functions

Those differences were visible almost immediately at their events.

Profound: A Community Already Speaking the Language

Profound’s Marketing Engineer Happy Hour, held Aug. 25 on a rooftop near Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Chinatown, felt less like a recruiting event than a gathering for people who had already bought into the premise.

The venue was polished. The event had a clear structure. And unlike the many technology happy hours whose agendas begin and end with an open bar, there was an actual program.

Eleanor Hooker, Profound’s Community and Customer Marketing Lead, organized the event. Attendees spent much of the evening talking before Nick Lafferty, one of Profound’s founding marketing engineers, closed the night with a live demonstration.

What stood out most was not the demo itself, although watching someone build a marketing agent in real time was cool; it was the level of fluency in the room.

The conversations I had were already several steps beyond, “What is AEO?”

People were discussing specific Profound features, how agencies were adapting their workflows, what AI search might mean for traditional marketing and what marketers could actually build when they started thinking more like engineers.

Several attendees I spoke with worked at major agencies, including Ogilvy and Edelman.

Profound has put considerable effort behind the term “Marketing Engineer,” a title meant to describe a hybrid operator who sits somewhere between marketer, strategist and technical builder. It follows a broader trend in technology toward roles like Clay’s GTM Engineer or Palantir’s Forward Deployed Engineer: jobs centered on applying a company’s technology to solve a specific set of problems.

At the event, that positioning did not feel purely theoretical. Many of the people there already seemed to identify with the underlying idea, whether or not “Marketing Engineer” ultimately becomes the industry’s preferred title.

The Profound employees were also unusually active in the room. They circulated, introduced people and kept conversations moving. The result felt deliberate.

It felt less like Profound was simply hosting an event and more like it was actively building a community around the category.

Peec AI: Building its New York Team

Peec AI’s GTM NYC Night, held Sept. 24 at The Otter in SoHo, had a noticeably different energy.

The setting was smaller and more intimate, with drinks, large trays of food and a crowd gathered around Peec as it builds out its presence in New York. Peec is headquartered in Berlin, and its New York office is still relatively new and heavily focused on go-to-market roles.

I went to their event two days prior, but when I walked in, was immediately told that it was a women’s only event. I was embarrassed, apologized and left. The next event, two days later, I was excited to attend, walked into the event hoping to meet other Peec customers and agency operators. Profound had set a high bar. Instead, nearly everyone I spoke with was either applying to Peec, or currently in the middle of interviewing at Peec. While all Peec employees wore their Peec AI t-shirts, it felt a little like a fraternity rush event.

At Profound, many of the people I met were already working in AEO and wanted to talk about the category itself. At Peec, the majority of the people I spoke with were interested in the category, but did not know much about it. I had a great conversation with someone in sales at a digital branding agency. He knew not much about AEO but we still had a great conversation about how influential ChatGPT and Google AI are in people lives and how it is going to radically change the customer journey.

Later in the evening, I had a great conversation with Melanie Aranguez, Peec’s Talent Acquisition Specialist, about how the company approaches recruiting and the type of team it wants to build. It was clear that the company values diversity, and it was refreshing to hear that even though Peec uses AI to source talent, Melanie still places a strong emphasis on the human component of the hiring process.

I also spent time talking with Leon Sentker about how agencies are currently using Peec to better serve their clients.

As someone who runs an agency, my conversation with Leon was probably the most useful one I had all night. We talked about how smaller agencies are using Peec as part of their AEO offering and how the platform fits into the services they provide to clients. Because Peec sits at a lower price point than Profound, agencies of all sizes may find it easier to incorporate into their client offerings.

The food also looked incredible. I had eaten dinner immediately before arriving, which in retrospect was a tactical mistake, so I cannot offer an actual food review. But the trays were massive and looked great.

Like Profound’s event, the Peec team was easy to talk to and actively engaged throughout the night. But the purpose felt different. Profound seemed focused on deepening a community that already existed around its product and the broader AEO category. Peec seemed focused on introducing people to the company and building the team that will expand its presence in New York.

While I was not able to connect with any other Peec AI customers, the event overall was put together and a nice evening.

Conclusion

If the goal was to spend an evening immersed in AEO itself, Profound’s event offered more.

The attendees I met were more likely to already understand the category, the conversations went deeper into the product and the broader marketing implications, and the programming gave people something concrete to discuss after the formal portion ended.

Peec’s event succeeded at something else.

It made the company feel approachable.

The smaller setting made it easy to meet employees, ask questions and understand what the company is trying to build in New York. For someone considering joining Peec’s go-to-market organization, the evening would have been particularly useful.

So I would not describe one as a successful event and the other as an unsuccessful one.

I would describe them as events designed around two different corporate priorities.

Profound is cultivating believers.

Peec is recruiting builders.

And in an industry still this young, both companies may be hosting very different events a year from now.