Key facts
- Keenable has raised $26 million in seed funding.
- The startup is building a web search index designed for AI agents.
- Its index contains over 100 billion documents.
- Keenable's API is currently used by AI labs and inference providers.
- The company partnered with Gradium to support live information retrieval.
Keenable, a new startup co-founded by former Yandex search executive Andrey Styskin and German AI scientist Matthias Petri, has emerged from stealth with $26 million in seed funding. The round was led by Accel, with participation from Conviction Partners and several business angels. The company is focused on building a web search index specifically designed to serve AI agents, addressing the limitations of current search engines optimized for human users.
Styskin believes that AI chatbots perform better when their responses are grounded in source documents, creating a new search paradigm distinct from traditional human-centric search. Keenable has already built an index of over 100 billion documents, and its API is being used by AI labs and inference providers for both training and runtime purposes. The startup has also partnered with voice AI company Gradium to enable live information retrieval.
Keenable's approach aims to overcome the significant costs associated with scanning the entire internet at scale. Styskin, drawing on his extensive experience in search infrastructure at Yandex and Amazon, explained that specialized index structures are crucial for rapidly narrowing the search space based on a query. This contrasts with enterprise search solutions that can become prohibitively expensive at web scale. Accel partner Zhenya Loginov noted that AI companies have limited options for web-scale search infrastructure, especially as tech giants like Google and Microsoft restrict access to their APIs.
Styskin sees an opportunity to innovate in agentic queries, where smaller companies like Keenable can offer more cost-efficient solutions compared to established players. Despite the high costs of building and maintaining such a large index, Keenable is focused on managing expenses. With a team of 15 engineers, the company plans to double its headcount by the end of the year to support its go-to-market strategy. Keenable aims to become the leading search provider for AI agents, though it faces competition from players like Brave and Exa, as well as Google's own AI-focused search overhauls.