Nvidia, DuckDuckGo back AI search start-up You.com in US$50 million funding round

September 11, 2024

You.com, which makes an artificial intelligence-powered search engine and productivity tools, has raised US$50 million in a new funding round that includes backing from Nvidia and Duck Duck Go.

The fresh capital brings the company’s total haul to US$99 million. Investor Georgian led the round, with participation from SBVA (formerly Softbank Ventures Asia), Salesforce Ventures and Day One Ventures. The company declined to share its latest valuation.

Founder and chief executive officer Richard Socher started You.com, officially called SuSea, as an AI-powered search engine after spending four years as Salesforce’s chief scientist. As the company has grown, so has competition in the AI-powered search market, with Alphabet and Microsoft infusing AI into their search products, even as start-ups like Perplexity grow in popularity.

Beyond just search, Socher aims to position You.com as a productivity tool for people at work and add AI agents to its offerings. “We don’t just give you a list of blue links when you ask a question,” he said.

Right now, Google dominates the market for short informational inquiries, Socher acknowledged, but he said there’s still opportunity in working with companies. You.com can generate more complex answers than competitors, he said, and the product can summarise information from multiple websites with citations. The company is also adding the ability to create custom AI agents to help with tasks at work.

Right now, You.com works with a range of large language models, the technology that underpins generative AI chatbots, including from OpenAI, Google, Cohere and Meta Platforms. It’s also building its own LLM, Socher said.

You.com claims millions of daily users, including at organisations like Salesforce, Stanford University and the start-up Hugging Face. The start-up said it has signed customer deals with social media firms, tech upstarts and publicly traded companies. It charges customers based on how much they use the service, which Socher said is key to helping large companies make the most of their AI investments “We looked at how we can differentiate from a pretty busy space and No 1 is accuracy, No 2 is looking at customer success,” Socher said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

In the company’s latest funding, Nvidia was the second-largest check in the round, Socher said, adding that the backing from corporate investors is evidence that there’s demand for this kind of AI tool within workplaces. Reuters earlier reported some details of the funding talks.