Exa is building a search engine designed to return precisely what a user asks for, using a novel neural approach rather than traditional keyword-based methods. The company's technical work spans neural search, applied AI, end-to-end neural networks, and web search architecture. It has raised over $100M in funding and serves thousands of companies across sectors including AI startups, private equity, and consulting.
The company offers two main products. Its Search API delivers results with response times under 200 milliseconds. Websets, its most powerful product, is designed for complex queries. Exa operates with a usage-based sales model rather than ad-driven revenue, which it describes as removing perverse incentives from search.
Exa maintains significant research compute infrastructure, including 18 nodes equipped with 8xH200 GPUs - referred to internally as an exa-cluster. The company positions itself as an applied AI lab with a focus on giving users and AI systems full control over data.
