Proprietary study · 2026 edition

AI Barometer 2026: which brands the AIs actually cite.

The barometer of brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Meta AI — from Europe to Bangkok. 5,347 citations analysed, 1,057 players, 8 sectors — and a ranking by the KVS score.

5,347
citations analysed
1,057
players ranked
394
calibrated queries
4
AIs: ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity · Meta AI
8
sectors, from Europe to Bangkok
Explore a sector
KAIS Barometer · 2026 Edition

Being cited is the new SEO. Here's who is winning the war.

When a decision-maker, a patient or a parent asks an AI “what's the best option?”, four engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Meta AI — shape the answer. We queried these AIs across 394 queries, extracted 5,347 citations covering 1,057 players and 8 sectors, from Europe to Bangkok, then computed a proprietary score: the KVS.

01

Mistral, Doctolib and Revolut dominate

Three companies reach a KVS of 100/100 in their sector. Common thread: perfect coverage across all three AIs, not just one.

02

83% of the top 30 is European

Unlike SEO, where US giants crush the rankings, the AIs mostly cite European players on European queries.

03

A single AI caps you at 40 points

Multi-AI coverage is the single most decisive factor. 91% of the top 40 is cited by all three models simultaneously — the new standard.

04

Paris leads SaaS, London fintech

Paris concentrates 40% of SaaS leaders (Mistral, Doctolib, Contentsquare, Dataiku). London polarises fintech (Revolut, Wise, Checkout.com).

05

Some champions are entirely absent

Companies valued at over €500M appear in none of the queries. AI visibility isn't correlated with size — but with structure.

06

SEO no longer predicts visibility

Training corpus, Schema.org, brand authority and primary sources are replacing backlinks as the dominant signal.

07

Law: Bredin Prat crushes it (100 vs 64)

A single firm dominates both “consumer” and “market” queries. The Anglo-Saxon Magic Circle caps below 18: a massive premium for native French-language players.

08

Real estate: the most polarised

SeLoger + Meilleurs Agents capture 71% of citations. No local agency appears on “best agency in [city]”: the ground is wide open.

09

Health: Doctolib merges both layers

21 rank-1 mentions out of 25. The sector cleanly separates the “user” layer (Doctolib, Kry, Qare) from the “market” layer (hospitals, clinical AI tools).

10

Paris-Lyon law: the spot is up for grabs

Howard Avocats owns Paris employment law (16 answers out of 24). But 64% of the 232 firms cited appear only once — and as soon as the question turns to price, citation drops to 17%.

11

Bangkok schools: a Big 3 holding 64% of rank-1 spots

NIST, Patana and ISB lock in the recommendations. Meanwhile, Perplexity cites a school that doesn't exist 21 times — the “Dulwich ghost”, spread by SEO aggregators.

12

Bangkok health: Bumrungrad, the default answer

64 first-place spots across 83 patient queries, on all 4 AIs. Behind it, Kamol monopolises gender-reassignment surgery and 7 ghost queries cite no clinic at all.

Sector ranking

The brands most cited by the AIs, by sector.

A snapshot of the top per sector. The KVS weighs coverage across the panel's AIs, the average citation rank and volume.

SectorCited leaderKVSFollowed by
SaaS / TechMistral AI100Doctolib · Contentsquare · Dataiku
Finance / FintechRevolut100Adyen (96.0) · Stripe · Wise
Law · France (business)Bredin Prat100Gide (64) · Magic Circle (<18)
Real estateSeLoger100Meilleurs Agents (87.6) · Idealista · Notaires de France
Health · EuropeDoctolib100Kry · Qare · hospitals · clinical AI tools
Law · Paris & LyonHoward Avocats100Facchini (Lyon, 100) · Delsart (86.0) · Hoche (44.3)
International schools · BangkokNIST100Bangkok Patana (85.7) · ISB (82.0) · Shrewsbury (51.0)
Health & aesthetics · BangkokBumrungrad100Yanhee (79.0) · Kamol (78.8) · Wansiri (59.8)

Full ranking of the top 40 brands per sector, with the AI-by-AI breakdown, in the PDF report.

Sector · SaaS / Tech

SaaS & Tech: Paris places six champions in the top 10.

On European SaaS/Tech queries, the French ecosystem dominates. Six of the top ten citations are French.

#CompanyCountryKVS
1Mistral AI🇫🇷 France100.0
2Doctolib🇫🇷 France90.8
3Odoo🇧🇪 Belgium74.2
4Contentsquare🇫🇷 France72.9
5Qonto🇫🇷 France66.8
6Dataiku🇫🇷 France65.1
Finding 1

US platforms relegated to mid-table

Stripe, Typeform and Pipedrive — global SEO champions — cap between KVS 41 and 49 on European queries. The LLMs reproduce the corpus of the European tech press, not the Google ranking.

Finding 2

The entire top 12 is tri-AI

Every company above KVS 40 is cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity alike. Single-engine players cap at 30-40 points, whatever the product and the funding.

Finding 3

186 companies cited for 15 queries

The head captures the essentials: beyond the top 12, dozens of players earn a single mention and vanish. One-off citations build nothing.

Strategic insight

Paris concentrates 40% of the SaaS/Tech leaders cited by the AIs (Mistral, Doctolib, Contentsquare, Dataiku, Algolia…). French DeepTech is better documented in training corpora than people assume — the fruit of intense press coverage since 2020. For a challenger, head queries (“best CRM”, “best project-management tool”) are locked in by years of accumulated corpus: the lever isn't one more feature list, but becoming the textual definition of a precise workflow — the Doctolib effect — documented in top-tier tech media.

Sector · Finance / Fintech

Finance: London crushes it, Amsterdam and Stockholm follow.

European fintech is polarised by the City. Adyen holds the Dutch seat; Stripe runs its European operations from Dublin.

#CompanyCountryKVS
1Revolut🇬🇧 United Kingdom100.0
2Adyen🇳🇱 Netherlands96.0
3Stripe🇮🇪 Ireland83.2
4Wise🇬🇧 United Kingdom75.4
5Qonto🇫🇷 France69.4
6Pennylane🇫🇷 France42.1
Finding 1

A locked top 5, then the cliff

Revolut (100), Adyen (96.0), Stripe (83.2), Wise (75.4), Qonto (69.4) — number 6, Pennylane, already drops to 42.1, and the curve keeps falling.

Finding 2

Breadth beats rank

Stripe takes rank 1 more often than anyone (17 times) yet stays third. Revolut is cited 41 times across the panel: being present everywhere weighs more than winning somewhere.

Finding 3

The most fragmented pool in the barometer

258 unique companies cited for 40 FR + EN queries. Hundreds of players earn one mention and disappear — only repetition across all three engines scores.

Strategic insight

Beyond the Paris–London–Berlin trio, Amsterdam (Adyen, Mollie), Stockholm (Klarna, Tink) and Barcelona (Typeform, Factorial) produce champions. Italy, though, is absent from the top 30 — a deficit of public documentation, not of talent. For a fintech outside the top 5, taking on neobank or payment queries is a corpus war lost in advance: the lever is to own a precise financial job-to-be-done — expense management, treasury, revenue-based financing — across all three engines at once. That corpus is thin, and a KVS of 20-30 is reachable there within two quarters.

Sector · Law · France (business law)

Bredin Prat takes half the citations. The Magic Circle watches the train leave.

Across 30 queries in two layers — 15 “consumer” and 15 “market” — a single firm dominates both. The Anglo-Saxon giants cap out on French-language queries.

#CompanyCountryKVS
1Bredin Prat🇫🇷 France100.0
2Gide Loyrette Nouel🇫🇷 France64.0
3Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier🇫🇷 France31.8
4Freshfields🇬🇧 United Kingdom29.9
5Captain Contrat (legaltech)🇫🇷 France20.5
Finding 1

A 36-point gap at the top

Bredin Prat (100) dominates Gide Loyrette Nouel (64.0) and Darrois Villey (31.8). The fifth most-cited player is a legaltech — Captain Contrat (20.5).

Finding 2

Prestige doesn't index

Linklaters (17.8) and Clifford Chance (14.6) cap below 18: their corpus lives in Chambers and Legal 500, not in the French-language sources the LLMs read.

Finding 3

Both layers, or nothing

Firms visible on a single layer — consumer or market — cap at KVS 12-20. Cross-layer visibility is multiplicative, not additive.

Strategic insight

For a firm ranked between 10 and 30, the lever isn't more generalist content — that's saturated. It's capturing a vertical niche (healthcare M&A, AI, energy, international succession) with dense output, marked up with LegalService + Attorney + FAQPage. A niche firm goes from KVS 5 to 40+ in 9 months and overtakes full-service firms four times its size.

Go deeper: the Legal AI Barometer 2026 — 80 queries, Paris vs Lyon, the cost wall, engine-by-engine behaviour →
Sector · Real estate

The most concentrated sector: two portals capture 71% of citations.

SeLoger and Meilleurs Agents (AVIV group) together take nearly three quarters of AI mentions in French real estate. No brick-and-mortar agency appears before rank 14, with a KVS below 8.

#CompanyCountryKVS
1SeLoger🇫🇷 France100.0
2Meilleurs Agents🇫🇷 France87.6
3Idealista🇪🇸 Spain44.3
4Notaires de France🇫🇷 France43.1
5Rightmove🇬🇧 United Kingdom27.1
Finding 1

An AVIV duopoly

SeLoger (100) and Meilleurs Agents (87.6) — same owner — absorb nearly three quarters of mentions. No physical agency or network before rank 14, below KVS 8.

Finding 2

“Best agency in Toulouse” → SeLoger

Local agencies with hundreds of Google reviews are textually non-existent to the engines: they publish no structured content about their own markets.

Finding 3

The investor layer is open

On REIT, crowdfunding and yield queries, the leaders change: Wemo One (19.8), Iroko Atlas (18.0), EstateGuru (12.1) — absent from the consumer top 5. A field barely defended.

Strategic insight

An agency at 0 mentions can reach KVS 25-40 in its area within 6-9 months: 12 hyper-local guides (“Buying in the 15th arrondissement”, “EPC C or D: the real price after renovation”), RealEstateAgent + LocalBusiness + FAQPage markup, 20 local-press citations via Digital PR, a monthly cadence. On a geolocated query, the LLMs prefer a precise local player to a national aggregator — when that player exists textually.

Sector · Health · Europe

Doctolib merges both worlds. Everything else is split in two.

With 21 rank-1 appearances out of 25, Doctolib is the only player across the five European sectors to dominate both the consumer and the professional query. Below it, two worlds with no company in common.

#CompanyCountryKVS
1Doctolib🇫🇷 France100.0
2Kry / Livi🇸🇪 Sweden30.7
3Qare🇫🇷 France26.9
4Maiia🇫🇷 France14.5
5Medadom🇫🇷 France8.4
Finding 1

Category dominance

21 rank-1 appearances out of 25 citations. Doctolib is the only company across the five European sectors to win both the consumer and the professional query.

Finding 2

Two casts, no overlap

User layer: Kry/Livi (30.7), Qare (26.9), Maiia (14.5). Market layer: Karolinska (21.0), DAX Copilot (15.6), Charité Berlin (15.0), Nabla (9.5). Almost no company in both.

Finding 3

Clinical AI is still forming

Nabla, Owkin and Corti are each strong on one or two engines — never all three. Disciplined multi-AI coverage takes a player from KVS 5 to 30 in six months.

Strategic insight

Three moves depending on your position: (1) teleconsultation platform ranked 5-15 — the “user” fight is lost, pivot to a vertical (mental health, dermatology, paediatrics); (2) clinical-AI vendor — your KVS hinges on Perplexity, which rewards technical documentation and certifications (e.g. CE / health-data hosting) cited textually; (3) hospital/clinic — invisible everywhere: Hospital + MedicalBusiness page, published PROMs, press citations. 12-18 months, but very few competitors.

Sector · Law · Paris & Lyon (individuals)

Paris & Lyon: the spot is up for grabs — firm by firm, engine by engine.

80 individual-client queries — 5 practice areas, 2 cities — put to Gemini, Meta AI and Perplexity: 640 citations across 232 firms. A firm is named in 75% of answers. The sector's problem isn't absence — it's volatility and concentration.

#ParisKVSLyonKVS
1Howard Avocats — employment law100.0Facchini Avocat — real estate100.0
2Hoche Avocats — business44.3Delsart Avocats — IP86.0
3Kohen Avocats — employment39.1Bressand Avocat — IP81.3
4Cabinet Zenou — employment38.7Cabinet Bouchara — IP74.9
5Avi Bitton — employment37.2Erovic Avocats — employment57.1

KVS normalised to 100 per city, against the local leader.

Finding 1

The cost wall

As soon as the question turns to price, a firm's citation drops to 17% — and Perplexity names no one. The sector's biggest blind spot, and its most vacant territory.

Finding 2

64% of firms cited only once

232 firms named, but the tail is accidental: being cited once is down to luck. Recurring citation, by contrast, is a built asset — dated expertise content, a consistent entity, a structured site.

Finding 3

The engine matters as much as the city

Gemini names 3.1 firms per answer, Meta AI 1.3. And in Lyon, the AI falls back on the Bar twice as often as in Paris (33 referrals vs 17): it's looking for a firm to name — the Lyon window is open.

Strategic insight

Some firms already own their answer: Howard in Paris employment law (16 answers out of 24), Delsart in IP and Facchini in real estate in Lyon. Proof, in the data, that the spot can be taken — by practice area × city. Directories, meanwhile, scatter: no platform exceeds 5% of answers. There's no monopoly to unseat — there's a spot to occupy.

Go deeper: the Legal KVS Barometer 2026 — 80 queries, 5 practice areas, the cost wall, the 3 engine behaviours →
Sector · Education · Bangkok

Bangkok international schools: a Big 3 locks 64% of the top spots.

86 queries from the parental decision journey — discovery, curriculum, budget, SEN, relocation — put to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: 1,769 citations across some sixty schools, 10 intent categories.

#SchoolRank 1KVS
1NIST International School68100.0
2Bangkok Patana School2885.7
3ISB — International School Bangkok5182.0
4Shrewsbury International School1651.0
5St Andrews International Schools1840.9
6Harrow International School Bangkok1031.5
Finding 1

NIST, the Doctolib of Bangkok

68 rank-1 citations — 2.4× more than any other school. NIST dominates both the “parents” layer (discovery, relocation) and the “proof” layer (results, comparisons): the most complete dominance profile in the market.

Finding 2

15 money queries locked, 24 blue oceans

The IB belongs to NIST, AP to ISB, SEN to St Andrews, boarding to Harrow. But the whole budget segment is vacant (0% Big 5 presence on fee queries), as are 12 neighbourhood queries and Thai-English bilingual.

Finding 3

The Dulwich ghost

Perplexity cites a “Dulwich College Bangkok” that doesn't exist 21 times — spread by SEO aggregators. And RIS racks up 76 mentions without a single rank 1: always cited, never recommended.

Strategic insight

Attacking a money query locked by tri-AI consensus head-on is the most expensive path. A mid-tier school can instead become THE reference on a vacant territory — budget, neighbourhood, bilingual, national community — in 90 days: content structured by parental intent, School + FAQPage markup, consistency across site, directories and local press. The three-AI rule applies here too: King's College gets 30 mentions on Gemini vs 4 on ChatGPT — being strong on a single model mechanically caps the score.

Sector · Health & aesthetic surgery · Bangkok

Health in Bangkok: Bumrungrad is the default answer across all four AIs.

83 patient queries — generic, aesthetic, medical tourism, trust — put to four models: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Meta AI. 1,068 citations across 47 players; 82 of 83 queries cite at least one clinic.

#PlayerAIsKVS
1Bumrungrad International Hospital4/4100.0
2Yanhee International Hospital4/479.0
3Kamol Cosmetic Hospital4/478.8
4Wansiri Hospital4/459.8
5ID Clinic Bangkok4/447.0
6Masterpiece Hospital3/428.1
Finding 1

The 4-AI rule

Only 17 of 47 players are cited by all four models. The rest play half a market — or a quarter. Bumrungrad, meanwhile, takes 64 first places on generic, trust and medical-tourism queries.

Finding 2

The Masterpiece blind spot

Strong on ChatGPT (707 points, more than Yanhee), Masterpiece is at zero on Gemini. Depending on a single model exposes half your patient flow to one algorithm.

Finding 3

Monopolies & ghost queries

Kamol locks gender-reassignment surgery — rank 1 on all four AIs. Conversely, 7 ghost queries (price, safety, comparisons) cite no clinic at all: the purest content opportunity in the sector.

Strategic insight

The hospital giants rule the generic queries; specialist clinics seize the sharp procedures — ID Clinic, Wansiri. For a challenger clinic, the plan of attack fits in two lines: target the 34 blue-ocean aesthetic-medicine queries and the 7 ghost queries (price, safety, comparisons) with procedure pages marked up MedicalClinic + FAQPage and published prices — exactly where no incumbent defends its ground.

Go deeper: the Bangkok Health & Aesthetics Barometer 2026 — full ranking of all 47 players, money queries, blue oceans (FR / EN) →
Sub-sector · Fertility & IVF · Bangkok

Fertility: Safe Fertility overtakes Bumrungrad — and the legal framework has no owner.

35 international-patient questions — general, procedures, success rates, price, legal framework, source markets — put to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Meta AI. Full grid: 140 answers coded, 34 clinics scored, not a single query locked.

#ClinicAIKVS
1Safe Fertility Center4/4100.0
2Bumrungrad Fertility & IVF Clinic4/479.4
3Bangkok Hospital Fertility Center4/450.9
4Prime Fertility Center4/441.9
5Jetanin Institute4/441.3
6Superior A.R.T.3/425.4
Finding 1

Specialisation beats size

On procedure queries (ICSI, egg freezing, FET…), it's Prime Fertility — a clinic, not a hospital — that leads. When the patient names their treatment, perceived expertise beats the hospital brand.

Finding 2

Not one query locked

Across 35 queries, none has the same #1 on three engines or more — even the English-speaking doctor is contested. Four engines = four markets = four chances to swing for a challenger.

Finding 3

The ownerless legal framework

All five legal questions (foreigners, single women, surrogacy…) are ghost or near-empty: two cite no clinic, and aggregators (Konkai, PlacidWay) lurk alone. The purest content opening in the sector.

Strategic insight

A duopoly rules the generic queries (Safe × Bumrungrad), but 9 of the 12 money queries carry an aggregator in the top 3, and 8 first-place spots remain ownerless. A challenger clinic's plan of attack: take the empty ground (legal block, logistics, destination comparisons) with factual, marked-up pages, then contest the soft-preference money queries where non-giants — Jetanin, Superior, LRC — already lead.

Go deeper: the Bangkok Fertility & IVF Barometer 2026 — full KVS ranking 140/140, 12 money queries, 8 first-place spots with no owner (FR / EN) →
Cross-sector read

The three-AI rule: being cited by just one is no longer enough.

Multi-AI coverage is the most decisive signal in the KVS. A brand cited by a single AI caps at 30-40 points; those above 70 are, without exception, cited by all three.

95%
of the top 40 cited by ChatGPT
92%
cited by Gemini
89%
cited by Perplexity
83%
of the top 30 is European

Optimising for ChatGPT alone mechanically caps a KVS at 40-50. Each model is an independent, cumulative access route — ignoring Gemini or Perplexity means giving up half your audience. Geographically, Paris leads SaaS (40% of leaders), London fintech, Berlin and Munich follow; Italy and the Nordics beyond Sweden are almost absent.

The invisibles

Why €500M champions never show up.

Several companies valued at over €500M appear in none of the 145 queries in the European panel. Three factors explain it — and what replaces them comes down to four signals.

The 3 causes of invisibility

1. Sales-led, not audience-led communication. The AIs don't read your CRM — they read your public articles, interviews and white papers.

2. No Wikipedia page. A core corpus for LLMs. No press coverage → no Wikipedia → no citation.

3. Unstructured content infrastructure. Without JSON-LD (Organization, Service, FAQPage…), content is unreadable to extraction engines.

The 4 new signals

1. Notable primary sources. A mention in the FT or Les Échos is worth more than a thousand directory backlinks.

2. Complete Schema.org. JSON-LD markup becomes a prerequisite, no longer an option.

3. Cross-source consistency. Website, Wikipedia and LinkedIn must all say the same thing.

4. Density of structured Q&A. Question-and-answer pages are the most extracted.

SEO was a war of links. GEO is a war of sentences. Whoever produces the clearest, most citable, most widely distributed sentences wins.

How we measure

The KVS protocol, in three steps.

No black box: the method is reproducible, and that's what makes the score defensible.

01 · QUERIES

394 calibrated questions

Questions typical of a decision-maker, a patient or a parent in the discovery phase, submitted once per AI, in a neutral session — no history, no personalisation.

02 · EXTRACTION

5,347 citations logged

For each answer: players cited, rank in the list, mention context. 1,057 unique entities across 8 sectors, from Europe to Bangkok.

03 · WEIGHTING

The KVS score out of 100

A rank 1 doesn't weigh like a rank 5, and coverage across all the panel's AIs (three in Europe, four in Bangkok) is the most decisive factor. Hence the final score.

KVS formula

KVS = Σ (CTRrank × weightAI) × (1 + coveragebonus)

Three combined signals: the rank achieved (a CTR weighted by position), multi-AI coverage (a +10% bonus if all the panel's models cite the brand, +3% for high partial coverage), and frequency across the panel. Normalised to 100, by sector.

What the KVS does not measure

Traffic. The KVS measures citation, not the click through to your site.

Product quality. Only the models' perception is assessed.

The brand long tail. The scope is deliberately sector-based and reproducible.

Full report

The complete KAIS Barometer 2026

The full ranking of 40 brands per sector, the AI-by-AI breakdown, the European sovereignty maps and the six levers that replace SEO. Free, in exchange for your work email.

PDF · 8 sectors · 5,347 citations analysed · June 2026 edition

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FAQ

Everything you need to know about the barometer.

Methodology, limits, and how to read — then improve — your position.

What is the KAIS Visibility Score (KVS)?+

A proprietary index normalised to 100 that measures a brand's organic visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It combines the rank achieved in each answer, multi-AI coverage and the frequency of appearance across a sector panel of queries.

Why these three AIs, and not Claude or Grok?+

ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity concentrate most B2B traffic in Europe: ChatGPT by volume, Gemini through its native integration into Google Workspace, Android and Chrome, and Perplexity through its adoption as a search engine. The Bangkok studies add Meta AI, dominant in South-East Asia via WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Future editions may widen the panel further.

How were the queries chosen?+

394 queries calibrated with marketing directors, buyers, lawyers, estate agents, doctors and expat families, to reflect real discovery and evaluation scenarios. Spread across eight sectors (SaaS/Tech, Finance, Business law, Paris-Lyon law, Real estate, European health, Bangkok international schools, Bangkok health), in French, English and local scenarios, asked in a neutral session.

Does the KVS replace SEO?+

No, it complements it. SEO captures transactional intent (“buy X”, “price of Y”); GEO/KVS addresses the upstream phase — discovery, evaluation, comparison — where decision-makers turn to the AIs. The two channels add up.

My company doesn't appear. Is that serious?+

Serious, no. Urgent, yes. It means that across your sector's queries, the panel AIs never cited your brand — a deficit of structured presence in the public text corpus, not a judgement on your product. It's diagnosable and fixable in 60 to 90 days.

Can you pay to appear in the ranking?+

No. The ranking rests strictly on the real answers of the AIs to the 394 panel queries. No brand can buy its position or be excluded. It's this methodological neutrality that gives the index its value.

What are the first levers to gain KVS in 30 days?+

Three quick wins: implement complete Schema.org JSON-LD markup (Organization, Service, Offer, FAQPage) on your key pages; strengthen your Wikipedia presence via notable press sources; and structure your pages in question-and-answer format, the most extracted by the AIs.

Can I cite this data in a presentation or an article?+

Yes, with attribution: “Source: KAIS Barometer 2026, KaiZen AI Strategy” and a link to this page. The full PDF report includes reusable high-definition charts.

And you — are you cited in your sector?

Find out your KVS score in 48h, on the queries that decide your clients.

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