Triple Whale Acquires Anteater to Expand AI-Powered Commerce Intelligence

Acquisition Makes LLM Visibility Trackable, Comparable, and Revenue-Linked for Brands

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Jan. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Triple Whale, the complete intelligence platform used by more than 50,000 ecommerce and retail brands, today announced it has completed their first-ever company acquisition of Anteater, an AI visibility platform that analyzes how large language models (LLMs) surface brands, products, and sources in AI-generated answers. With this acquisition, Triple Whale becomes the only platform where brands can track their visibility in AI search alongside business performance, so they can connect AI visibility to real revenue outcomes.

As AI tools increasingly shape how consumers research and evaluate products, discovery is rapidly shifting from traditional search engines into platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other LLMs. Rather than returning links or ads, these systems generate direct answers, fundamentally changing how brands are surfaced, compared, and chosen. As a result, AI Engine Optimization (AEO) is emerging as a critical new demand driver, and a growing blind spot for brands without visibility into how they appear in AI-generated responses. Internal data from Triple Whale underscores the speed of this shift: In Q4 2025 alone, merchants on the platform recorded more than 424,000 orders directly referred by LLMs, compared to just over 7,000 across all of 2024, representing nearly 60x growth year over year.

To date, insight into AEO has been limited, leaving many brands without a clear understanding of their presence in these environments. With the integration of Anteater into Triple Whale's platform, AI visibility becomes a measurable signal alongside marketing, conversion, retention, and operational metrics. This gap is addressed by analyzing thousands of consumer-style prompts across leading AI models to determine when brands are mentioned, which sources are cited, and how they rank against their competitors. It also reveals the specific pages, listings, communities, and third-party content AI models rely on, giving brands clear direction on where influence actually lives.

"AI visibility is still early, but its growth is accelerating rapidly, putting it on a clear path to becoming a critical layer of the ecommerce funnel in 2026," said Maxx Blank, co-founder of Triple Whale. "By integrating the capabilities of the Anteater platform, we're giving operators real visibility into how AI models surface products and recommendations, and, more importantly, the ability to connect that visibility directly to outcomes like revenue, so they know what's working and where to focus next."

In addition to visibility, all insights flow into Triple Whale's Moby AI system, which uses proactive AI agents to deliver step-by-step recommendations on how they can improve LLM visibility, turning those initial insights into better discovery so brands can maximize performance. With daily tracking of mentions, citations, and sentiment, brands can clearly see whether their actions are improving AI visibility over time, rather than guessing or waiting months for impact.

"LLMs are fundamentally changing commerce, ushering in a new era of agentic shopping and discovery where intent, context, and relevance matter more than ever," said Alejandra Tenorio, Vice President, Digital Marketing and eCommerce at RMS Beauty. "Triple Whale has been a trusted partner as we've navigated many chapters of our DTC growth, and this is a natural next step in what we can build together as we lean into their AEO solutions, and define what the next generation of discovery looks like for RMS Beauty."

AI is increasingly shaping how consumers research, evaluate, and choose products. Triple Whale can help brands navigate this shift by bringing greater transparency, measurement, and decision support to areas of the commerce funnel that have historically been difficult to see. Organizations interested in evaluating how and where they rank in LLMs can get started for free or book a demo by visiting triplewhale.com/ai-visibility.

About Triple Whale
Triple Whale is the complete intelligence platform for ecommerce, helping brands stop guessing and start knowing what's actually driving growth, what's wasting money, and what to do next — with total confidence.

By pulling all of a company's data into one place, delivering measurement tools teams can actually trust, and applying the smartest AI in the industry, Triple Whale turns fragmented data into clear insights and actionable recommendations. That intelligence can then be put to work through AI agents and automations that generate creative assets, take action across marketing channels, and make every tool in their stack smarter and more effective.

More than 50,000 brands including Pressed Juicery, OUAI, and True Classic trust Triple Whale to grow faster and drive revenue with fewer resources by uncovering opportunities and acting on them at a scale that would be impossible manually.

To learn more, visit triplewhale.com.

Media Contact:
Maggie Hickey
[email protected]

SOURCE Triple Whale