“We aim to deliver users a model, where AI makes your browser empowering and helpful, with visible citations and a zero-data-retention commitment. We can show results and how we're recommending things, which helps drive us closer to our goal of transparency and trust.”
About Firefox
Firefox is Mozilla's open-source web browser, used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. Built around openness, privacy, and user trust, Firefox is bringing AI search into the browser, and Exa is the information layer behind it.
The Challenge
Bringing AI answers into the browser without losing trust
Firefox wanted to give users AI summaries directly in the browser. But answers generated purely from an LLM's training data are stale, unverifiable, and hard to trust: the opposite of what Firefox stands for.
Training data goes stale
Answers generated from a model's training data can't reflect what's on the web right now.Trust requires citations
Firefox's transparency values demand that users can see where every answer comes from.Privacy is non-negotiable
Any search partner had to meet Firefox's privacy bar, including a zero-data-retention commitment for user queries.The Solution
Exa as the information layer behind Firefox's AI features
Exa powers Smart Window on Firefox desktop and Quick Answers on Firefox for iOS. Firefox calls Exa's /search endpoint to retrieve, rank, and extract the most relevant passages from each page, synthesizing a direct answer with inline citations, pulling from the live web rather than the LLM's training data.
Smart Window on desktop
Open-ended web questions answered with AI summaries and cited sources, directly in the browser.Quick Answers on iOS
The same pipeline tuned for one-sentence answers on mobile.Retrieval Firefox controls
Firefox can restrict retrieval to certain domains (like answering "how do I use this browser?" from Mozilla's own support docs), control freshness for time-sensitive queries, and add filters for content moderation.Why Exa
Chosen after a thorough evaluation
Firefox picked Exa after a thorough evaluation, including multilingual evals, latency profiling, and examination of safety and privacy handling.
A globally-sourced index
Answers come from Exa's index of 1.4 trillion URLs and 100 billion documents, so the experience works around the world.Cited sources in every answer
Every answer includes cited sources in the response, supporting Firefox's goal of transparency and trust.Zero data retention
Exa retains none of Firefox's query data, matching Firefox's privacy values.Results
AI search for Firefox users worldwide
Firefox users now get AI summaries in their browser, pulling from the live web with visible citations. To learn more about the shared values behind the partnership, watch Will Bryk's fireside chat with Ajit Varma, Head of Firefox, above.