Key takeout: What a week for AI Search Intelligence. First, Peec.ai, the Berlin based startup, announced a $21 million Series A. Twenty-four hours later, Adobe revealed it had acquired SEMRush, one of the most recognisable SEO platforms of the past two decades.

I was at Profound’s Zero-Click London event when the news dropped and the reaction in the room said everything. Nobody had this on their bingo card, but it shows the strength of the AI Search Intelligence space and the rise of the GEO category.

Early in my SEO career, SEMRush was my daily driver for competitor analysis and category insight. Over time, I gravitated towards Ahrefs because the UI, the link tools and the focus on business impact aligned better with how I worked. Many marketers will still argue for SEMRush and ultimately it comes down to preference and workflow.

This deal marks the moment the industry stops debating whether SEO is dead. It isn’t. It’s morphing into AI Search Intelligence - and GEO is emerging as the new category.

Key takeout: On any other week this would be the headline. Google has dropped Gemini 3 - the next major step in its model evolution - and it’s already sending shockwaves through the industry, OpenAI included.

According to a memo reported by The Information, Sam Altman acknowledged Google’s recent acceleration and warned staff of “temporary economic headwinds for our company”.

In his typical off-the-cuff tone, he noted there may be “bad vibes ahead”, adding that while “we know we have some work to do”, he still believes OpenAI are “catching up fast”.

Google’s momentum shouldn’t surprise anyone. The DeepMind acquisition - and Demis Hassabis’ vision over a decade ago - set the foundations for this moment. OpenAI may have dominated mindshare since ChatGPT 3.5 landed in late 2022, but Google has been building towards this inflection point for years.

And while Gemini isn’t my personal day-to-day tool, I’m using AI Mode far more than I was even a month ago. That shift alone says a lot.

Key takeout: I have no doubt we will see the full roll out of ads in 2026 across the major platforms, which includes OpenAI, Perplexity and Google.

As mentioned on this newsletter on multiple occasions, OpenAI needs to monetise the majority of their 800M WAU (which are free users) and the most obvious solution is to offer an ad experience of some sorts. Google and Meta built empires off the back of the ads in search and social, so why should we expect owners of AI Chatbots to be any different?

I had envisioned that Google's AI Mode ads may resemble that of the new collapsable ad unit that was rolled out in October 2025 in web search, however - from the screenshots reviewed, it doesn't look like this is the case.