Vectara, a Santa Clara, CA-based operating platform for neural network technology, announced $20 million in seed funding.
The seed round was funded by tech and search pioneers from companies, including Slack and Google, alongside leading technology venture funds.
Vectara also launched its first product, Neural Search as a Service, which leverages large language models to understand the intent behind user queries and bring meaning to search. It is available in two editions; Growth provides a generous free tier, and Scale includes a complete set of enterprise features.
“We started Vectara because we saw an opportunity for neural networks to revolutionize how people find meaning through data,” said Amr Awadallah, Vectara’s Chief Executive Officer. “Until recently, though, only the largest organizations with deep ML expertise could access this breakthrough technology. With our API-first neural search, developers and engineers can immediately start applying NLP to the challenges they face every day. I have no doubt that the future of search is unequivocally neural search.”
Vectara makes neural network technology accessible to developers, even without machine learning expertise.
Vectara’s platform aims to become the leading engine for unlocking insights and value from the volumes of untapped data held by most modern organizations. To achieve this vision, Vectara developed zero-shot AI models that leverage the power of deep learning neural networks to analyze unstructured data without requiring additional training.
Vectara’s turnkey neural search platform is available to users everywhere, with zero language configuration or tuning requirements. Customers get an end-to-end search pipeline with market-leading search relevance, available on a tiered pricing model.
The free version, Growth, offers users up to 15,000 queries per month, while Scale provides a complete search pipeline capable of running on the largest websites in the world.
Company: Vectara, Inc.
Raised: $20.0M
Round: Seed Round
Funding Month: October 2022
Lead Investors: Undisclosed
Additional Investors:
Company Website: https://vectara.com/
Software Category: Neural Search as a Service
About the Company: Founded by experienced search technologists Amr Awadallah, Amin Ahmad, and Tallat Shafaat, Vectara is a Neural Search as a Service. The platform provides a complete ML search pipeline, from extraction and indexing to retrieval, re-ranking, and calibration. Every element of the platform is API-addressable. In minutes, developers can embed the most advanced NLP models for app and site searches. The company offers a generally available, 100% neural search as a service that enables customers to understand the intent and meaning behind user questions and radically increases search relevance compared to keyword-based algorithms. The platform provides API access to the most advanced NLP and AI capabilities in minutes. It empowers developers to quickly integrate the platform into their stacks and augment site and app search, product discovery, customer support, user navigation, and more. Vectara’s APIs can be implemented by a wide skill set of developers to build search within their sites and applications easily.
Source: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/10/12/2532694/0/en/Vectara-a-New-Leader-in-Applied-Large-Language-Models-Launches-its-First-Neural-Search-as-a-Service-Offering-to-Transform-Content-Discovery.html