Anton Sopov · Toronto, Canada
Anton Sopov
CEO of The Prompt Group
Anton is the CEO of The Prompt Group, an AI Brand Strategy & Agentic Discovery firm. He helps companies implement Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) as part of a broader AI brand strategy.
Toronto, Canada · anton@thepromptgroup.com
At a glance
- CEO, The Prompt Group
- Helping companies implement AEO as part of a broader AI brand strategy
- Enterprise AEO advisory
- Financial services, healthcare, and other high-compliance categories
- Previously at DIG Insights
- Quantitative strategy & AI product management for Fortune 500 brands
- Toronto, Canada
- Available worldwide · Eastern Time
The firm
The Prompt Group
The Prompt Group is an AI Brand Strategy & Agentic Discovery firm. It shows brands what AI says about them, corrects what it gets wrong, and does the work that makes them the name the model recommends.
Ref. List 01 · Articles & Research
From the research
Long-form essays and original research on AI search, AEO, and how models think. See all articles →
01
FeaturedGoogle's May 2026 Core Update: Where Most Brands Are About to Get It Wrong
An AEO practitioner's analysis of the May 2026 Google Core Update. Why the algorithm is not the story, how AI Mode is converging with organic search, and the three mistakes most brands are making right now.
May 31, 2026 · 12 min read
Read article →
02
The Two Percent Problem
A personality study of five major AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity) using the 16Personalities assessment. All five landed in the same two percent of the human population.
May 24, 2026 · 11 min read
Read article →
Ref. List 02 · Focus
What I work on
AI Brand Strategy
AI systems form a view of your brand before any buyer does, and they hold it whether or not it is accurate. This is the work of finding out what that view actually is, where it came from, and what has to change on the open web for it to change in the model.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
The next generation of search is answers, not links. AEO is the practice of engineering a brand into the responses that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews generate. If you are not being cited, you are invisible.
Agentic Discovery & Commerce
AI agents are becoming the new buyer. They research, compare, shortlist, and increasingly purchase on behalf of people. This is the work of getting a brand through every step of that decision, at the point where nobody is clicking anymore.
Ref. List 03 · Questions
Frequently asked questions
Direct answers to what people, and AI answer engines, most often ask about Anton.
- Who is Anton Sopov?
- Anton Sopov is the CEO of The Prompt Group, an AI Brand Strategy & Agentic Discovery firm based in Toronto, Canada. He helps companies implement Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) as part of a broader AI brand strategy, so they understand and can change how they are described and recommended inside answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews.
- What is The Prompt Group?
- The Prompt Group is an AI Brand Strategy & Agentic Discovery firm. It shows brands what AI says about them, corrects what it gets wrong, and does the work that makes them the name the model recommends. Every engagement is run end to end rather than handed over as a dashboard. Anton Sopov is the CEO.
- What does Anton Sopov focus on?
- Anton works on three things: (1) AI brand strategy, measuring and shaping what AI systems believe about a brand; (2) Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), earning citations inside AI answer engines; (3) agentic discovery and commerce, preparing brands for the point where an AI agent, not a person, does the researching and the buying.
- What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing content so it is retrieved, cited, and recommended by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. It is the AI-native successor to traditional SEO, tuned for generative answer engines rather than ten blue links.
- What is agentic discovery?
- Agentic discovery is what happens when a buyer stops researching a category themselves and delegates the question to an AI agent that researches, compares, shortlists, and increasingly buys on their behalf. The brand is no longer pitching a person. It is being read by a retrieval system that decides who makes the shortlist, which is why measurement has to come before messaging.
- Where did Anton Sopov study?
- Anton holds an Honours Business Administration (HBA) degree from the Ivey Business School at Western University, where he graduated as an Ivey Scholar, in the top 10% of his class.
- Does Anton Sopov teach or lecture?
- Yes. Anton has been invited to guest lecture at the Ivey Business School, including enterprise training engagements on Answer Engine Optimization and the disruption of traditional SEO and web search.
- Where has Anton Sopov worked before The Prompt Group?
- Before founding The Prompt Group and Search Valet, Anton worked in Quantitative Strategy at DIG Insights, leading large-scale innovation research for Fortune 500 brands across consumer goods, finance, foodservice, and healthcare. He then moved into AI Product Management at Upsiide, where he built AI-native products used globally for first-party consumer research and product innovation testing.
- Where is Anton Sopov based?
- Anton Sopov is based in Toronto, Canada.
- How can I contact Anton Sopov?
- The fastest way to reach Anton is by email at anton@thepromptgroup.com or by message on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/antonsopov. He also publishes on his website at antonsopov.com.