AthenaHQ

The Solution & Approach

AthenaHQ combines AI search measurement with tools for changing what answer engines say about a brand. Its measurement layer tracks visibility and citations, draws on a catalog of 3M+ AI responses, and uses its Query Volume Estimation Model to estimate prompt demand where conventional keyword-volume data is unavailable.

The remediation layer includes Oracle for identifying incorrect brand claims and the Athena Citation Engine for assessing citation likelihood before publication. Athena AI, introduced in June 2026, replaced the dashboard as the primary interface. AthenaHQ's own ACE study covered 1,761 published articles and reported an association between higher scores and higher citation rates. It does not establish that optimization caused those outcomes.

Co-founder Andrew Yan advocates prompt portfolios organized by product, audience, buying stage, market, language, and engine. His positioning favors engine-specific AEO strategies. AthenaHQ's October benchmark commentary did not disclose enough sampling detail to establish general market baselines.

Best for

Brand and content teams that want AI search monitoring, claim correction, and content optimization in one platform, with self-serve entry pricing and enterprise integrations.

Pricing & trial

Self-Serve costs $95 per month with annual billing or $295 month to month for 3,600 credits, eight LLMs, and unlimited seats; Enterprise pricing is custom, and the published offer specifies a first-month discount rather than a free trial. Pricing.

Agent Experience

How you build on this platform (or wire it into your own agents):

AthenaHQ provides documented API access on Enterprise, an OAuth-scoped MCP integration, an official Claude connector, and llms.txt, giving teams documented surfaces for connecting AI search data to agents.

Reference customers

Slalom, SoFi, Coinbase, Hearst, HexClad, PagerDuty, Checkr, Grüns, Nuvadermis, AutoRFP, Rootly, Lago, Coupons.com, Artisan, Ollie.

Case studies & customer stories

• Nuvadermis: AthenaHQ reports a 5x citation-rate increase and tripled AI search share of voice. source
• AutoRFP: customer reports 22.4% of inbound leads attributing discovery to ChatGPT. source
• Grüns: AthenaHQ reports 23x growth in AI citations over two months. source
• Rootly: AthenaHQ reports 52.6% AI search share of voice. source
• Lago: AthenaHQ reports a 50% increase in demos from AI search. source

Recent moves

• 2026-10-30Andrew Yan advocated engine-specific AI search strategies using AthenaHQ benchmark findings, without disclosing the prompt sample or sufficient methodology to establish general platform baselines. source
• 2026-10-26Andrew Yan recommended governed prompt portfolios organized by product, audience, buying stage, market, language, and engine. source
• 2026-10-24Hiring listings observed on this date included Growth Engineer and Founding Product Marketer roles, with Growth Engineer applicants required to demonstrate a project built using Claude Code or a similar tool. source
• 2026-10-19AthenaHQ announced an official connector listed in Claude's connector library, making AI search performance data available in chat. source
• 2026-10-16AthenaHQ announced the Athena Citation Engine, which scores content for citation likelihood and cites vendor validation across 1,761 articles. source
• 2026-09-18Andrew Yan described AthenaHQ as serving "300+ brands," a self-reported count included in a post sign-off. source

Company, Financials & Funding History

Founded in 2024 and based in San Francisco, AthenaHQ was co-founded by Andrew Yan, formerly of Google Search, and Alan Yao. The company joined Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch and emerged from stealth in June 2025 with 70+ customers.

Analyst placement

According to Andrew Yan, Duane Forrester ranked AthenaHQ first on coverage and confidence in an April 2026 AI search tool assessment. This is attributed to the individual evaluator, not a Forrester Research placement. Source