Sitecore’s acquisition of Scrunch: what does it mean for Sitecore customers?

Since the launch of Sitecore.AI at Sitecore Symposium in November 2025, there haven’t been too many significant announcements from Sitecore HQ. Then out of the blue in early June, Sitecore announced the acquisition of Scrunch, a platform that supports AI visibility and helps brands to ensure they are represented successfully by AI tools like Claude, ChatGTP and Gemini. This is becoming a critical area with user behaviour evolving from traditional Google searching to more use of AI tools as the first place to search.  

In this post we’re going to explore the ins and outs of the acquisition, and what it potentially means for Sitecore customers. A little spoiler – we think the acquisition makes sense and in the long term will benefit customers.

What or who is Scrunch?

Scrunch positions itself as an “AI customer experience platform” that better enables brands to track how they are being represented across LLMs and AI search tools, and then improve and optimize AI search visibility and brand representation.  

The company was formed in 2023 by Chris Andrew and Robert MacCloy and Sitecore’s acquisition is rumoured to have cost about USD $225m.

The Scrunch platform includes a number of features:

·       An Agent Experience Platform (AXP) which detect AI agents and serves them optimized content so brands appear more frequently within AI responses and answers.

·       AI Agent Analytics to show how bots are interacting with your site.

·       Site Maps showing which shows how AI sees your site, so you can spot issues and optimise pages.

·       AI Search Monitoring & Citations, to track how your brand is being represented across different AI tools such as Claude, Perplexity and ChatGTP

·       AI Search Insights providing actionable suggestions for improvement and recommended changes

·       AI Shopping, allowing brands to track which products are showing up in AI shopping results.

·       AI Search Trends reporting on emerging patterns and behaviours.

Why has Sitecore made the acquisition?

Search behaviour is changing rapidly with McKinsey reporting that half of all consumers are already AI-powered searching. As a result, more and more digital marketing teams are focusing on areas such as AEO and GEO.

Sitecore’s official announcement of the acquisition makes the point that increasingly AI systems are influencing people’s perceptions before they actually interact with the brand, such as looking at their website.  Because of this it is important to ensure that what AI says is not mispresenting your business or products, and that your brand is also being mentioned as much as your competitors. 

This is where Scrunch comes in. It provides an opportunity for companies to have “a scalable way to see where they appear in AI answers and to fix what AI is missing or getting wrong.”   

Scrunch therefore brings an important new capability into the Sitecore portfolio of products and if combined with Sitecore’s AI-powered DXP provides an opportunity to “create a connected platform that publishes content across channels with brand integrity and message clarity”, directly connecting Scrunch to workflows within Sitecore.

It’s also worth noting that Scrunch goes beyond being a monitoring and analytics tool because it can reformat content for AI tools automatically, also without impacting the human experience. There is therefore the potential for changes to be reflected back into content held on the Sitecore platform, bringing an elegant, connected and automated solution that covers the entire digital footprint.

3chillies view on the Scrunch acquisition

Sitecore has a track record of acquiring companies with niche or specialist functionality which are then integrated into the Sitecore platform, so a strategic acquisition for a business like Scrunch is not really surprising. Having said that, Scrunch is the first company that Sitecore has bought since 2021 when it went on a spending spree and acquired four SaaS companies (Boxever, Four51, Moosend and Reflektion) to round out Sitecore’s DXP offering.

Overall, we think this is a smart, strategic acquisition that makes a lot of sense. AI search visibility and brand representation are important issues which need to be addressed today and do have a sense of urgency about them as search behaviour changes rapidly.

This is an area where the are currently gaps with Sitecore’s capabilities, so Scrunch complements Sitecore’s platform nicely.  It is also an area where key competitors have already been making moves, for example with Adobe’s recent acquisition of Semrush.

Scrunch is not only a solid product in the space but also has some synergies with Sitecore AI with its ability to automate optimisation, with the potential to fit in with Sitecore.AI neatly. It is easy to imagine in the near future an overall connected DXP that can use agents to automate processes, covering multiple areas of digital customer experience including AI search.  Of course, there are risks with any acquisition – especially in a field that is moving so fast – but we think this is a well-considered move.

What will be the next steps for Sitecore customers?

At the moment there is no immediate change in terms of services offered. While Scrunch is now positioned as “a Sitecore company”, it has also confirmed it will continue to be available as a standalone platform. There is also no sudden change to existing Sitecore licenses or subscriptions, but it appears that the plan is to integrate Scrunch with Sitecore.AI, a pattern that has happened for most of Sitecore’s other acquisitions.

There is also no indication of a timeline, product roadmap or any licensing or pricing details, but we can assume that Scrunch will be integrated sooner rather than later, as the Sitecore moves pretty quickly these days.

Overall, this will please existing Sitecore customers who should eventually be able to access some important and useful tools. Sitecore may also be able to attract new customers looking for an integrated DXP that also deals successfully with GEO, AEO and risks around AI visibility.

Any questions? Get in touch!

If you’d like to discuss what the Scrunch acquisition means to you or how to better optimise your Sitecore website in the age of AI, then get in touch!