How a firm gets perceived relies as heavily on results gained from AI-generated citation tools as a prospect’s existing knowledge of a fund.
TL;DR: own your fund’s narrative to assist AI Search.
AI-generated content is becoming part of the financial marketing world’s fabric, where getting a brand’s profile found by AI Search engines is proving a fruitful channel for exploration. Duly, some recent analysis by RepTrak looked to put AI content’s success in the spotlight.
In fact, such content – the summaries produced by tools like ChatGPT and Gemini when an investor researches a business – ranks as the 7th most ‘impactful’ channel; i.e. how much a channel influences a stakeholder’s opinion of a company.
This ranks AI content above email, social media news, influencer content and, most glaringly, traditional news coverage. Almost in spite of that finding, though, AI reaches only about 10% of stakeholders globally.
RepTraks’ Q4 2025 data pointed to a wide reputation gap seen between stakeholders exposed to AI-referenced information about a business (80.4 on average) and those that were not (74.0). This was one of the study’s largest impact gaps, trailing only direct personal experience with an organisation.
Elsewhere, this finding was then further emphasised by Josh Hochberg, President of Communications at ICR, who wrote in PR publication O’Dwyer’s that reputation is “an input” to valuations rather than being a byproduct of it.
He urges CEOs, CFOs and boards to actively own their narrative that is being fed into AI systems, and not leave its generated outputs to chance, with a CEO being “the single most powerful communications asset a public company has.”
So, what does this mean for fund marketers?
Reach metrics have long dominated marketing budget meetings. Today, the information given by an AI research tool reaches fewer people directly, but carries disproportionate weight for those that do encounter it (especially throughout their due diligence stage, likely when deciding to take a meeting.)
Therefore, funds have to put themselves in a prospect’s shoes. If they are asking a bot “who are the best macro managers?”, the answer should be drawn from the manager’s crafted commentaries, letter, strategy overviews and executive bios. While these examples remain flagship content, they may have to be tweaked to be optimised for the AI systems to cite a business accurately, using clear and well-structured language.
Likewise, periodically seeing how different AI tools answer prompts a prospective LP may ask is a useful exercise. The visibility of an AI answer is its own reputation KPI, essentially, as much as email metrics or website performance. This is a needle-moving moment that shows no sign of slowing down.
Sources
RepTrak, “AI, The Influencer”
O’Dwyer’s PR, “Reputation Drives Valuation. The CEO, CFO and Board Have to Own That Story”
