How brands are mentioned in AI responses is becoming a new battlefield: Zhenao Digital Intelligence has launched the "GEO Operations Expert" digital employee, which focuses on providing one-stop generative engine optimization services.

Shanghai Zhenao Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. completed a RMB millions-level seed round financing in October 2026, led by Xuhui Capital. The proceeds from this round will be mainly used for product and technology R&D, market and channel expansion, product operation and customer success, as well as working capital reserve. This marks the company's first public disclosure of financing.

Founded in 2026, Zhenao Intelligent Technology's core product Civitas empowers brand enterprises and marketing agencies with job-level digital employee organizations to deliver professional marketing capabilities, and continuously advance diagnosis, strategy formulation, content creation, publishing and effect tracking. The first launched role is "GEO Operation Specialist".

Lowering the Threshold of Professional Operation with IPIP

Besides drafting copies, the marketing team also needs to determine what to write, check content, coordinate publishing, and decide on next-step actions based on performance. When using multiple AI tools, requirements, brand materials and judgment standards need to be passed back and forth repeatedly; for agencies serving multiple clients, such coordination work also recurs across different brands and projects.

Civitas organizes these consecutive workflows into a marketing role: it sets the scope of responsibilities for digital employees, and integrates professional methodologies, brand knowledge, tool invocation and delivery standards. Business personnel submit tasks in natural language, the system will supplement necessary information, break down steps and connect execution flows, so that the diagnosis and judgment from the previous step can serve as the basis for the next step of work.

Focusing on how people and AI collaborate, the company puts forward the IPIP product concept, namely "Intuitive Planning" and "Interactive Preview". Users assign tasks in business language, and the system converts them into easy-to-understand execution plans; users can check phased results at any time, preview, modify and confirm at key nodes such as entry selection, article finalization and publishing, before the system continues to advance subsequent steps. The company hopes that through this interactive design, business personnel can more easily mobilize professional capabilities, and devote their energy to goals, judgment and creativity.

Cutting into One-Stop Automated Operation from GEO

GEO, short for Generation Engine Optimization, focuses on how brands are understood, mentioned, cited and recommended in AI search and Q&A scenarios. To carry out operations, brands first need to find out which questions they are absent from, why their competitors are mentioned, and what content deserves priority for supplementation.

According to the company, Civitas's "GEO Operation Specialist" starts with brand diagnosis, analyzes brand performance, competitors and citation sources under relevant questions, and plans the direction of entries and content accordingly. After entering the creation phase, the system imports brand materials, project objectives, selected entries and platform requirements into copy generation, and provides content check, problem positioning and modification suggestions. After the user confirms the content, the system proceeds to channel publishing, and tracks changes in brand mentions, citations and competitor performance through monitoring, so as to provide a basis for the next round of adjustment.

Civitas's one-stop automated operation is reflected in the continuous connection of all links around the same brand and project: the output of the previous step is handed over to the next step, and diagnosis records, articles, publishing records and monitoring results are all integrated into the same workbench. Brand teams can continuously manage their own performance in AI-generated answers, and agencies can also demonstrate project progress, content and result basis to their clients.

The accumulation of professional experience is also a key focus of product design. Brand facts, product materials, expression requirements and project records provide context for subsequent work; human modifications and delivery feedback serve as the basis for product improvement. The company plans to further combine continuous evaluation to precipitate verified methodologies into reusable job experience, so that digital employees can gradually adapt to the work requirements of specific brands.

Evolving from Individual Roles to a Digital Marketing Legion

The company plans to reuse shared capabilities such as brand knowledge, content production and channel connection for more roles, and gradually form a "Digital Legion" composed of different professional digital employees. At that time, after users assign a broader marketing goal, the system will break down tasks around the goal and budget, dispatch multiple digital employees to perform their respective duties, share context, and adjust strategies based on performance feedback. This multi-role collaboration and continuous autonomous operation capability is the subsequent evolution direction of the product.

Civitas provides two types of services: self-service platform and professional entrusted operation. Brand teams and agencies can top up points and pay according to actual task consumption; clients who want to delegate execution can choose professional entrusted operation, and pay for results based on agreed service objectives, delivery scope and acceptance criteria.

The company aims to build Civitas into a civilian and inclusive marketing product: through natural language interaction and pay-per-usage model, small and medium-sized enterprises and teams with limited resources can also access professional marketing capabilities on demand. The two types of businesses share the execution capabilities of digital employees, and the company plans to continue to precipitate verified methodologies from the entrusted operation business into the product to expand the scope of reuse.

The first version of Civitas was launched in August 2026. According to the company's disclosure, as of October 2026, the platform has more than 80 registered enterprises and has generated paying customers, which is in the early stage of commercialization.

In terms of the team, the founder and CEO of Zhenao Intelligent Technology is Xu Yizhao. According to the team materials provided by the company, the founding team members have previously worked in enterprises including ByteDance, Alibaba Cloud and Ogilvy, with experience covering enterprise-level large model solutions, technology R&D, brand marketing and business operation.

In September 2026, Zhenao Intelligent Technology won the 6th place in the entrepreneurship group nationwide in the "Maker China" Artificial Intelligence Special SME Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. According to the company, Zhenao Intelligent Technology is also a director unit of the AI Marketing Application Working Committee of China Advertisers Association, a member unit of the Digital Marketing Professional Committee, and participates in the compilation of the "Generation Engine Optimization (GEO) Group Standard".

Xu Yizhao stated that the company hopes to "continuously expand the scope of marketing work that can be safely delegated to AI". At this stage, the company will focus on improving delivery stability and service capabilities around the GEO product, and the R&D of its proprietary marketing vertical large model is also under planning.