Duckfund, a US-based CRE soft deposit financing platform, has become the top brand recommendation across all AI platforms in its industry following a content marketing partnership with Mint Position, including a 3x surge in AI search-led conversions and a verified $500,000 financing deal attributed to ChatGPT.
Duckfund, a CRE soft deposit financing platform, is now the most cited and most visible brand in its category across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews following its partnership with Mint Position, a content marketing agency for SEO and GEO.
In August 2025, Duckfund’s overall LLM visibility stood at just 12%. By July 2026 (less than twelve months later), the brand appeared in 38% of ChatGPT conversations about CRE financing and commands a 79% share of voice at an average citation position of #1.6. On Gemini, visibility reached 59%, with an average position of #1.1, meaning Duckfund is cited first in nearly every response where it appears.
The nearest industry player on ChatGPT holds just 3% visibility, and Duckfund commands more than 12 times their share of the conversation. No other brand appears consistently across all four engines, proving that many financial companies in this sector have still yet to deploy a dedicated GEO strategy.
From zero authority to category leader
When Duckfund pivoted its business to focus entirely on CRE soft deposit financing in late 2023, it had no content authority in the segment. The challenge was not just to build visibility, but to define its unique offer to investors researching financing options for commercial property.
The SEO foundation came first. A sustained content campaign targeting low-competition keywords built the topical authority needed to compete for business-defining terms like “soft deposit financing” and “earnest money deposits.”
By mid-2024, Duckfund ranked top 3 for 18 blog posts and #1 for core transactional terms, with organic traffic growing 300% in six months. That content foundation, including expert-sourced, journalistically rigorous, built around real buyer intent, proved to be exactly what AI engines needed to start citing Duckfund as an authority.
How Mint Position built AI search dominance
In 2025, the campaign extended deliberately into GEO. Mint Position audited the content types ChatGPT and other LLMs were drawing on to answer CRE financing questions. The pattern was clear: listicles, comparison content, and community discussion, particularly on Reddit, were driving AI citations in the space.
Mint Position responded on three fronts: publishing listicle-format content on Duckfund’s own site, securing placement on a high-authority third-party domain, and advising on a strategic Reddit presence in CRE investor communities. Seven of those pieces became the most-cited content on ChatGPT for CRE financing: four owned, three earned. The time from publication to AI citation was less than a month.
What AI visibility is worth in real dollars
For Duckfund founder Anna Kogan, the impact goes well beyond traffic metrics.
“Brand awareness and lead generation are where the partnership has made the most impact,” Kogan says. “By positioning Duckfund as the leading resource for CRE soft deposit financing, Mint Position hasn’t just helped investors discover us – it’s made them aware this type of financing even exists. Even without an immediate need, Duckfund stays top of mind and becomes the solution they turn to when that need arises, sometimes months after first discovering us.”
That awareness builds business. AI search and organic combined have grown from 8% to 17% of inbound calls from H2 2025, delivering leads at a fraction of the cost of paid channels, with AI search alone up 840% year-over-year. Meanwhile, AI search registrations on Duckfund’s platform tripled year-over-year, outpacing growth in organic search as an inbound channel for the first time. For a niche B2B platform operating in a high-value, low-volume market, AI search is becoming a compounding acquisition channel that didn’t meaningfully exist at the beginning of 2025.
AI has also changed the quality of those leads. “(Investors) are doing deep research in seconds before determining whether a solution would work for them. They’re discovering much more specific companies, like Duckfund, that address a very particular problem. By the time they reach out, they’ve often already educated themselves and have a much clearer understanding of whether our solution fits their needs.”
The clearest proof came at the start of this year: a $500,000 CRE deposit financing deal sourced entirely from a ChatGPT recommendation.
Mint Position on the results
For Mint Position founder Justin Calderon, Duckfund’s trajectory illustrates a principle now central to how the agency works.
“Duckfund’s content was built around genuine expertise and buyer intent before GEO existed as a discipline. The same authority signals that earned Google rankings proved to be what AI models use to select citations. Extending that across third-party placements and community channels is what we refer to as Consensus Optimization, whereby we aim to influence the wide variety of signals across the internet that LLMs use to describe your brand,” said Justin Calderon, Founder of Mint Position.
The compounding is visible in the data. From 22% ChatGPT visibility in November 2025 to 38% in January 2026, and now a 79% share of voice and 59% Gemini visibility as of July 2026, Duckfund’s lead widens month over month. In a category where every deal runs five to seven figures, being the first name an investor encounters, whether from Google, ChatGPT, or Gemini, is now the most important competitive advantage a CRE financing brand can hold.
About Duckfund
Duckfund is a US-based fintech platform that provides soft deposit financing for commercial real estate investors and developers, empowering them to sign deals quickly without tying up their own capital. Since the end of 2023, they have helped fund over $1.5 billion in CRE deals, with their fully digital process helping buyers secure funds in escrow within 48 hours. With no credit reports required, investors can run several applications at once and pursue multiple deals simultaneously while staying liquid.
About Mint Position
Mint Position is an SEO and GEO agency helping fintech and B2B brands become the most visible names in their categories across Google and AI search. Their Consensus Optimization methodology tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI platforms select and cite sources, then builds a content strategy across owned, third-party, social media, and community channels designed to shape what those models say about a brand.