# Balzac AI

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/balzac-ai/ · added 2026-11-06 · updated 2026-11-06

**In short.** Balzac AI (AI writer that researches, writes and publishes SEO articles, Belgium): US$9.3K total since launch, October 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 2 co-founders named on the About page; total headcount not published. Launched February 2025; still running, revenue falling.

AI writer that researches, writes and publishes SEO articles · Belgium · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running, revenue falling · group: SEO and AI search

- Outcome: US$9.3K total since launch, October 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 9271)
- Launch: February 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 20
- Team: 2 co-founders named on the About page; total headcount not published
- Outside funding: No outside funding found in the sources read
- Main factor: Distribution
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 3, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Running, B2B, Marketing

Links:

- Visit hirebalzac.ai: https://hirebalzac.ai/
- Verified revenue on TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com/startup/balzac-ai

**The product.** A customer types the address of a website. Balzac reads the site, finds search keywords the site can rank for, writes long articles with linked sources, and publishes them to WordPress, Webflow, Wix, GoHighLevel or any site by webhook. Each week it also checks whether ChatGPT search and Google AI answers cite the site. The current plan costs US$79 a month per website for about 30 articles.

**Why it worked.** Two Brussels founders with past SEO and sales software companies built a narrow product: one plan, one website, articles on a schedule, no setup. The payment processor shows that it earned US$9,271 in 20 months, but also that monthly revenue fell from US$821 in May 2026 to US$138 in September 2026, and the founders listed it for sale in June 2026.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Balzac is an AI writer for SEO and GEO. SEO (search engine optimization) is the work of getting a website's pages to rank in Google's results. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the newer work of getting a site named as a source in the answers of AI assistants such as ChatGPT search or Google AI Overviews. The customer enters a website address; Balzac picks keywords, writes the articles, and publishes them to the customer's content management system without a human step.

The company behind it is Bromance Software SRL in Brussels. Its About page names two co-founders: Vincenzo Ruggiero, a developer whose own site lists the sales prospecting platform Overloop among his earlier projects, and Jean Derély, who co-founded the SEO audit tool WooRank. The first archived copy of the site, from March 2025, already sold three plans from US$29 a month.

The money figures on this page come from TrustMRR, a site that reads revenue directly from a company's Stripe account through an API key. Stripe is the payment processor that charges the customers' cards. TrustMRR shows US$9,271 of revenue since launch at its last sync on 9 October 2026, and US$138 in the last 30 days. The page also shows three failed businesses that promised traffic from Google before language models could write the pages.

## Pricing

Balzac plans read on the company's pricing page on 6 November 2026 (grade C). No yearly price is shown.

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | 0 | 0 | 3 articles, no card needed |
| Columnist | n/a | 79 | About 30 articles a month, 250 tracked keywords, one website |

The plan is per website: a second website is a second Columnist plan. The first 3 articles are free without a card, and the first payment has a 30-day money-back guarantee. In March 2025 the archived home page listed Basic at US$29, Premium at US$59 and Enterprise at US$99 a month per website billed yearly (US$39, US$79 and US$149 monthly) for 5, 15 and 30 articles a month. The founder-written TrustMRR profile lists Columnist US$79, Novelist US$99 and Ghostwriter US$179; only Columnist appears on the pricing page today.

## How much revenue does Balzac AI make? The numbers, graded

US$9,271 of Stripe-verified revenue in 20 months from an autopilot SEO writer, with monthly revenue falling in 2026

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue since launch, synced 9 October 2026 | US$9,271 | A | TrustMRR, read from Stripe through an API key. The profile says the Stripe API key expired on 9 October 2026, so later days are not counted. | [1] |
| Revenue in the last 30 days before 9 October 2026 | US$138 | A | TrustMRR also shows current MRR (monthly recurring revenue) of US$138 and 2 active subscriptions. | [1] |
| Revenue in the last 12 months | US$4,695 | A | TrustMRR. The last 6 months were US$2,139 and the last 3 months US$452. | [1] |
| Revenue before about October 2025 | about US$4,576 | calc | Calculated: 9,271 minus 4,695 equals 4,576. More than half of all revenue came in the first eight months or so. | [1] |
| Average revenue per month, last 12 months | about US$391 | calc | Calculated: 4,695 divided by 12 equals 391.25. | [1] |
| Best recent month | US$821, May 2026 | A | TrustMRR monthly timeline: US$607 in April, US$821 in May, US$632 in June, US$314 in July and August, US$138 in September 2026. | [1] |
| Fall from May to September 2026 | about 83% | calc | Calculated: (138 minus 821) divided by 821 equals minus 83.2%. | [1] |
| Founded | 11 February 2025 | C | Founded date entered on the TrustMRR profile. The founder's site lists Balzac as 2025 to today. The first Internet Archive capture of hirebalzac.ai is from 6 March 2025. | [1, 6, 7] |
| Team | 2 co-founders | C | The About page names Vincenzo Ruggiero (co-founder and CEO) and Jean Derély (co-founder). No source gives a total headcount. | [4] |
| Company | Bromance Software SRL, Brussels | C | From the About page and the page footer. | [4] |
| Current price | US$79 a month per website | C | About 30 articles a month, which the page divides to US$2.63 an article. | [3] |
| For-sale listing | Asking US$20,000, first listed 6 June 2026 | C | TrustMRR acquisition section, 5 offers received. TrustMRR gives a revenue multiple of 12.1x; calculated: 20,000 divided by (138 times 12) equals 12.08. | [1] |
| Traffic in the last 30 days | 2,534 visitors | A | TrustMRR, from the connected Google Analytics account. Revenue per visitor US$0.05. | [1] |
| Publishing targets | WordPress, Webflow, Wix, GoHighLevel, webhook | C | From the home page and llms.txt. An MCP server, a CLI and a REST API let AI agents run Balzac. | [2, 8] |

How to read this table: a grade A value was read by TrustMRR from the company's Stripe account. A grade C value is a statement on the company's own pages or the founder's site. A grade X value was computed on this page from the rows it names.

## When did Balzac AI launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a three-plan launch in early 2025 to a for-sale listing in June 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **11 February 2025** (grade C [1]): Founded date on the TrustMRR profile, country Belgium.
- **March 2025** (grade C [6]): The archived home page calls Balzac a fully autonomous AI copywriter assistant, with plans from US$29 a month per website and auto-publishing to WordPress, Shopify and Webflow.
- **2025 to October 2025** (grade calc [1]): About US$4,576 of revenue, more than half of the total so far.
- **May 2026** (grade A [1]): Best month in the visible timeline: US$821.
- **6 June 2026** (grade C [1]): Listed for sale on TrustMRR with an asking price of US$20,000.
- **September 2026** (grade A [1]): Monthly revenue falls to US$138.
- **9 October 2026** (grade A [1]): Last Stripe sync: US$9,271 since launch. The Stripe API key expires the same day.
- **November 2026** (grade C [2, 3]): The site sells one plan, US$79 a month per website, and markets the product for both Google and AI answers.

## Why did Balzac AI work?

### No setup

The customer types one website address. Balzac reads the site, finds competitors and keyword opportunities, and plans articles. The pricing page says there is no brief, no call and no keyword spreadsheet. This removes the work that agencies charge for.

### Publishing without a human

After a one-time connection to WordPress, Webflow, Wix or GoHighLevel, articles go live on a schedule and later edits are pushed to the live page. A self-serve product with automatic publishing is what lets two founders sell it without a content team.

### SEO plus GEO

By 2026 the marketing moved from Google rankings alone to citations in ChatGPT search and Google AI Overviews. Balzac checks each week which sites those assistants cite, and the site offers free checkers for AI crawler access to bring in visitors.

### A low price per article

The pricing page compares US$2.63 an article with round example prices of about US$400 for an agency and US$250 for a freelancer, and says these are illustrative, not a survey. The page also says that it cannot guarantee rankings.

## How it was built

These details come from the founder-written TrustMRR profile and the company's own pages. They are grade C.

- Ruby on Rails for the web app, with PostgreSQL as the database and Redis, and Tailwind CSS for the front end, as the TrustMRR tech stack section lists.
- Stripe for subscriptions. TrustMRR reads the revenue from the Stripe account.
- Google Analytics and Google Search Console connected to TrustMRR; the product also reads each customer's clicks per page from Google Search Console every Monday.
- An MCP server (Model Context Protocol, a standard way for AI assistants to call outside tools), a CLI and a REST API, so assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can order articles.
- No downloaded page names the language model that writes the articles.

Sources: [1, 2, 3, 8]

## Who tried this before Balzac AI, and why did they fail?

Three businesses in our database of failed startups promised small businesses traffic from search or easier content marketing before language models could write the pages. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Pressly (2011 to 2018; funding US$2.9M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A platform that helped brands collect, curate and distribute content to keep their audience engaged.
- Why it died: Larger marketing suites added curation as one feature, and competitors with broader integrations took the market.
- Record: 

### LocalOn (2013 to 2016; funding US$500K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Websites, social media links and local SEO for small shops, without coding.
- Why it died: It could not stand apart from Shopify and Wix, and limited funding slowed its product work.
- Record: 

### Waterproof Digital Camera (2013 to 2017; funding US$0; cause: Product/Tech Failure)

- Promise: An affiliate review blog that earned commissions from search traffic.
- Why it died: It relied on black-hat SEO tactics, and search engine updates removed the traffic.
- Record: 

## What changed

Before language models, content for search had to be written by people. Pressly and LocalOn sold tools around that work, curation and simple websites, but the customer still needed someone to write. Waterproof Digital Camera shows the other risk: traffic bought with tricks that the search engine later punished.

In 2025 a model can write a long article with sources in minutes, so Balzac sells the whole chain from keyword to published page for US$79 a month. The same change lets many competitors do the same, and the TrustMRR figures show how hard it is to keep customers: US$9,271 in total, but US$138 in the last month before the sync.

## Can one person copy Balzac AI now?

**Verdict: Yes, the product is easy to copy; keeping customers is the hard part.**

One person with an API key for a language model and a publishing connection to WordPress can build this. Many tools already sell automatic SEO articles, and Balzac's own numbers show revenue falling after a peak in May 2026. A copy needs a reason for customers to stay after the first months.

1. Reduce setup to one input, a website address, and do the keyword research automatically.
2. Publish directly to the customer's CMS so the product does the whole job.
3. Offer free checker tools on your own site that bring in visitors from search.
4. Show the payment-processor revenue publicly when you want to sell the business later.

**What is still open.** A writer for one industry or one language market, with facts checked against that industry's sources, is less crowded than general autopilot blogging. Reporting that proves the articles brought real clicks may also help retention.

## What could go wrong for Balzac AI?

- **Falling revenue and a for-sale listing.** TrustMRR shows US$821 in May 2026 and US$138 in September 2026, 2 active subscriptions, and a for-sale listing at US$20,000 since 6 June 2026. The Stripe API key expired on 9 October 2026, so the zero days after that date in the TrustMRR daily table do not show real sales and are not used here.
- **Testimonials from related companies.** Two of the six testimonials on the testimonials page come from companies that the co-founder lists on his own site: Javry (Javry Coffee, marked sold) and Overloop, where the quote is signed "Vincenzo R., Founder & CEO, Overloop AI". The page does not say that these are related companies. The home page also shows counters such as 1.8k+ articles written and 36 languages with no source.
- **Automatic articles and search quality.** Balzac publishes about 30 AI-written pages a month to each customer's site. Search engines may treat pages made at scale mainly to rank as low quality; this page found no source on how Balzac customers' pages fared. The pricing page says it cannot guarantee rankings, and the product links sources in each article.
- **Competition and model providers.** Other AI SEO stories on this site, such as Roundups and Topical Map AI, sell parts of the same work, and large SEO suites add AI writers. No downloaded page names the language model provider Balzac depends on, so its cost and its risk from model price changes are not known.
- **The founder's other products.** The co-founder's site lists other current products (Kasset, Roger, Letter) and past ones, among them an NFT collection. The Balzac pages read do not link to them.

## Sources

1. TrustMRR profile: Balzac AI, revenue synced 9 October 2026 — https://trustmrr.com/startup/balzac-ai (grade A). Read the markdown profile in full on 6 November 2026. Revenue figures are from Stripe through an API key (grade A); founded date, tech stack, pricing text and the for-sale listing are founder-entered (grade C).
2. Balzac home page: AI SEO & GEO on Autopilot — https://hirebalzac.ai/ (grade C). Read in full on 6 November 2026. Source for the product steps, publishing targets, the GEO checks and the counters.
3. Balzac pricing page — https://hirebalzac.ai/pricing (grade C). Read in full on 6 November 2026. Source for the US$79 plan, the free trial, the guarantee and the no-ranking-promise statement.
4. About Balzac — https://hirebalzac.ai/about (grade C). Read in full. Source for the two co-founders and the company name, Bromance Software SRL.
5. Balzac testimonials page — https://hirebalzac.ai/testimonials (grade C). Read in full. Source for the six testimonials and their signatures.
6. Internet Archive copy of hirebalzac.ai, 12 March 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20250312141038/https://hirebalzac.ai/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the early product description and the first three plans. The capture list shows a first capture on 6 March 2025.
7. Vincenzo Ruggiero, personal site — https://vincenzo.be/ (grade C). Read in full. The co-founder's list of current and past projects, including Balzac (2025 to today), Overloop and Javry Coffee.
8. Balzac llms.txt — https://hirebalzac.ai/llms.txt (grade C). Read the product and plan sections. Confirms the plan details, the publishing targets and the MCP server, CLI and API.
9. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Balzac AI? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Balzac AI).