Exa, an AI research lab focused on search technology, has secured $22 million (previous $5 million seed) funding in total. This combined seed and Series A round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm) and Y Combinator. The investment aims to accelerate Exa’s development of a search engine specifically designed for AI applications.
Just yesterday, we also reported about how Huma closed a massive $80M funding and launched a Shopify-like AI digital health platform. It’s an interesting story too.
Why the need of search engine built for the age of AI
Exa argues that current search engines, like Google, prioritise clicks and user behaviour, making them unsuitable for the information needs of AI systems. “Soon, AI will search the web more than humans,” stated Exa CEO Will Bryk.
“But search engines like Google were designed for humans, not AI.” Exa claims its technology addresses this gap by employing embedding models, similar to those used by large language models like ChatGPT. These models convert web pages into numerical representations, enabling Exa’s search engine to process vast amounts of information efficiently and identify the most relevant results for AI queries.
Exa highlights the limitations of keyword-based search engines. As an example, a Google search for “companies in SF building futuristic hardware” may return results optimised for search engine ranking rather than actual relevance. Exa, on the other hand, claims to deliver a list of companies that directly match the user’s intent.
Lightspeed Venture Partners, the lead investor, expressed enthusiasm for Exa’s approach. “Exa represents the intersection of an incredible team and a big vision for how AI applications will retrieve fresh knowledge,” said Guru Chahal, Partner at Lightspeed. He emphasised the critical role Exa could play in the AI ecosystem, alongside companies like NVIDIA and large language model developers, by providing the crucial data and knowledge layer.
Early traction and future plans
Exa reports that thousands of companies and developers have already integrated its technology. Applications range from AI writing assistants that source relevant research papers to venture capital firms searching for specific startups. The company also highlights its rapidly growing revenue, tripling in recent months.
Looking towards the future, Exa’s ambitions extend beyond simply providing a search API. Co-founder Will Bryk emphasises the potential of AI to “truly organise the web’s knowledge,” creating opportunities for a wide range of applications.
What we think about the new development
Exa’s approach represents a novel approach to search, specifically tailored for the information needs of AI systems. Whether Exa can successfully disrupt the established search engine landscape remains to be seen. However, the significant investment and early traction suggest that Exa’s technology has the potential to play a role in the evolving relationship between AI and information retrieval.
