In a stride toward revolutionising enterprise search, Onyx, an open-source AI research agent, has secured a $10 million seed funding. The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital. The investment from Y Combinator and notable angels, including Gokul Rajaram (Coinbase, Pinterest), Arash Ferdosi (Dropbox), Amit Agarwal (Datadog), and Kulveer Taggar (Zeus Living).
Onyx plans to channel these funds into further developing its AI research agent and expanding its team, focusing on engineering, developer relations, and go-to-market strategies.
This investment underscores the growing importance of efficient knowledge management in modern workplaces.
The visionaries behind Onyx
Onyx, the open-source AI assistant and enterprise search platform, was co-founded by Yuhong Sun and Chris Weaver in 2023.
Yuhong specialises in Machine Learning, particularly Natural Language Processing (NLP), and backend systems. Prior to founding Onyx, he worked on Deep Learning for NL-to-SQL and Semantic Search at Alation, Inc., where he contributed to advancements in translating natural language queries into structured SQL commands and enhancing search functionalities within enterprise data systems.
Chris served as a Technical Lead on the anti-fraud engine team at Robinhood, focusing on developing systems to detect and prevent fraudulent activities within the platform. In a previous endeavour, he achieved recognition as a top-100 North American player in the online game League of Legends, demonstrating strategic thinking and adaptability.
Together, Yuhong and Chris bring a blend of expertise in machine learning, backend development, and system security to Onyx, driving its mission to disrupt enterprise search and AI assistance.
Unique approach to enterprise search
As organisations scale, information often becomes fragmented across multiple platforms like Slack, Confluence, and Google Drive. Traditional keyword-based searches frequently fall short, leading to inefficiencies. Onyx addresses this by acting as a knowledgeable coworker, available 24/7, indexing data across over 40 tools, including Salesforce, SharePoint, GitHub, and Gong. Its AI agent mimics human search behaviour, exploring parallel pathways and delving into promising directions to provide comprehensive answers instantly.
A growing clientele
The company follows innovative approach has attracted a diverse clientele, from entertainment giants like Netflix to security-conscious organisations such as Thales Group and cybersecurity firms like Bitwarden. These enterprises leverage Onyx to streamline knowledge management, enhancing productivity and decision-making processes.
Open-source commitment and community engagement
A distinguishing feature of Onyx is its commitment to open-source principles. This approach fosters transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement, allowing organisations to tailor the platform to their specific needs while contributing to a broader community focused on advancing enterprise search solutions.
Future prospects
With the latest infusion of capital, Onyx is poised to enhance its platform’s capabilities further, integrate with more tools, and expand its market reach. By leveraging advanced AI and maintaining an open-source ethos, Onyx addresses the pressing challenges of knowledge fragmentation in today’s digital workplaces.
“We are excited to work with this impressive set of investors who have deep expertise in AI and open source technology to help us bring enterprise search and GenAI to more teams around the world,” said Yuhong Sun, Co-Founder of Onyx. “Having worked at high growth tech companies, we experienced first hand the challenges of knowledge getting buried in disparate knowledge bases and becoming lost. We built Onyx as an open-source solution for companies to solve this challenge without needing to send all their data to external parties.”
“Enterprises often grapple with fragmented knowledge spread across multiple tools,” said Adina Tecklu, Partner at Khosla Ventures. “Onyx is the open-source enterprise search solution designed with privacy and security at its core. It empowers customers with instant access to critical information, eliminating the need to switch between apps or waste time searching for answers.”
“At First Round, we invest in founders who have huge visions and see things differently than everyone else. This is exactly how I’d describe Yuhong and Chris. While they zeroed in on a practical and important use case for agentic AI — enterprise search — they knew that companies care deeply about privacy and security, which is one of many reasons why their Open Source approach makes so much sense. And when I spoke with customers on reference calls before investing, the reviews were so glowing that it made the decision to invest quite easy.”
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