The Problem

The web contains tons of valuable data that today's search engines can't find.

Our Solution

Build a perfect search engine

It's 2024, web search should never be bad, it should be perfect. You should be able to find whatever data you want, no matter what.

For example, "every space-themed podcast episode this week", or "all the European competitors to my company ranked by employee count". You can't do these because today's search engines use old search technology that's optimized for ads.

Exa is the first search engine optimized to return exactly what you ask for. We sell our search usage-based to customers -- no ads, just quality. We're an applied AI lab and we've barely begun. Our ultimate goal is perfect search.

How we're doing it

Develop neural search architectures

We train novel architectures for web search using end-to-end neural networks. Unlike keyword methods, neural methods get better with more compute and will win in the long run.

We're lucky to now own 18 8xH200 nodes worth of research compute... also known as an exa-cluster :)

Serve web-scale infrastructure

Building a search engine from scratch requires building massive-scale infrastructure. There are 100s of billions of webpages (roughly an exabyte!) that need storing, processing, indexing, and serving at high throughput.

Building this is fun but quite difficult. That's why search tools, like SearchGPT, actually rely on 3rd party search engines under the hood.

Who's doing it

We're an SF team of builders and researchers

Image of Will Bryk
Will Bryk

CEO

Will was one of the first engineers at Cresta where he built real time AI products. He studied CS and physics at Harvard, where he researched human/AI interaction and led the robotics club. Will considers himself an expert in both embedding models and chocolate chip cookies -- the jury is still out on which is more critical for company operations.

Image of Jeff Wang
Jeff Wang

Co-founder

Jeff spent three years building data and web infra at Plaid. He studied CS and Philosophy at Harvard, where he ran a GPU cluster in his dorm room and was roommates with Will. The team estimates that 20% of social analysis in San Francisco traces back to one of Jeff's many viral tweets.

Image of Ben Chen
Ben Chen

Technical Staff

Ben previously did quant trading at SIG and before that took the hardest math course in the country at Harvard. When we find frisbees, tailor made suits, or scribbled math formulas lying around the office, there's usually a Ben behind it.

Image of Hubert Yuan
Hubert Yuan

Technical Staff

Hubert previously worked on projects like particle simulations and automated wheelchairs. He studied CS in the Yao Class at Tsinghua University. Hubert's appetite for clean microservice architecture is perhaps only matched by his appetite for Haribo sour candy.

Image of Shreyas Sreenivas
Shreyas Sreenivas

Technical Staff

Shreyas previously worked on various projects, from training neural networks in Haskell to building a game streaming engine. He studied CS at the University of Waterloo. You can typically find Shreyas analyzing the price/performance of AWS services or crushing the team in basketball, sometimes at the same time.

Image of Isabelle Hughes
Isabelle Hughes

Growth

Isabelle previously was at Mckinsey consulting for tech companies. She studied politics and philosophy at the University of Melbourne. Isabelle has the remarkable ability to work intensely on one screen while at the same time watching a technical lecture on another. The team is unsure whether this comes from McKinsey training or is just an Australian thing.

Image of Eugene Chan
Eugene Chan

Technical Staff

Eugene previously designed and built LLM products at Palantir. He studied CS at Minerva University. Eugene loves two things and hates one -- designing beautiful frontends, optimizing high performance backends, and eating vegetables.

Image of Michael Fine
Michael Fine

Technical Staff

Michael previously worked on ML and privacy at various companies, including Apple. He studied CS at Harvard University. He also somehow finds time to cook chef-level meals and have PhD-level knowledge on nearly everything -- both of which the team enjoys consuming.

Image of Thais Branco
Thais Branco

Marketing

Thais was previously VP of Marketing at Nate, Hubla and most recently co-founded her own startup in Brazil. She studied Economics and Econometrics at the University of Chicago. She might beat Exa's search in the amount of restaurant recommendations or Taylor Swift references she can provide on the spot.

Image of Vishal Khanna
Vishal Khanna

GTM

Vishal was previously a management consultant at McKinsey & Co., and was part of the strategy team at TikTok Australia. He studied EECS and Finance at Monash University Australia. Vishal is the very rare person who can both code up any product and sell it to anyone. Given his messianic startup skills and obsession with Dune 2, some believe the similarity between 'Vishal' and 'Paul' is more than a coincidence.

Image of Felix Zeller
Felix Zeller

Technical Staff

Felix previously worked on opensource projects from next-gen text editors to composable knowledge management systems. He (almost) studied CS and philosophy at UIUC until he realized that he is already a beast. The only job Felix should not do is corrosion engineering, because he deeply wishes to convert the world into rust.

Image of Stacey Tara
Stacey Tara

People + Workplace Ops

Stacey previously worked on customer success and business development at YC-backed Awesomic. She got a bachelors in German Philology and a masters in communications from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, basically the Harvard of Ukraine. Stacey goes by many names at Exa -- workplace operator, recruiting coordinator, chief happiness officer -- but perhaps her most beloved name is "greatest cookie baker of all time". These cookies are unfairly delicious.

Image of You
You

Technical staff

You previously worked on some project that demonstrated exceptional skill. You studied CS at somewhere, but far more importantly want to learn by joining a startup working on massive-scale ML/infra. You are excited to tackle a mission as old as ancient greece -- organize the world's knowledge -- and recognize that to do that You must meet Us and become We.