Tavily provides an API-first search engine that returns pre-scraped, pre-ranked text chunks with citations for AI agents. It raised a $5M seed in July 2024 and a $20M Series A led by Insight Partners and Alpha Wave Global in August 2025, and was acquired by Nebius Group for a reported $275M in February 2026.
Tavily was founded in 2023 by Rotem Weiss and is based in New York. It has since been acquired by Nebius Group.
Disclosed funding to date totals $25M. The most recent disclosed round was a Series A of $20M, announced 1 August 2025. Investors on record include Insight Partners and Alpha Wave Global.
Direct and adjacent competitors tracked in the Atlas.
Search engine and API built for AI agents
Exa builds a web search index and API designed for LLMs and agents rather than human browsing, plus Websets for high-compute research queries. It raised an $85M Series B led by Benchmark in September 2025 and a $250M Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz in May 2026 at a $2.2B valuation.
Independent search index and search API
Brave Search, part of Brave Software, runs its own web index and sells a Search API that is used as a source by several AI answer engines and metasearch products. Brave Software is privately held and its search unit is not separately funded.