Keenable emerges from stealth with $26M to build AI-oriented web search index

Keenable, founded by former Yandex and Amazon search executives, has launched with a $26 million seed round led by Accel to create a web search index tailored for AI agents. The startup claims to have indexed over 100 billion documents and its API is already in production at several AI labs and inference providers. It has also partnered with voice AI company Gradium for live information retrieval.

Keenable's founders bring deep search expertise from Yandex and Amazon, where they previously built web-scale retrieval for AI applications like Alexa. The index of 100 billion documents already serves AI labs and inference providers in production, though customers remain unnamed. A partnership with voice AI firm Gradium supports real-time information retrieval.

The company is developing a Web Query Language to synthesize answers across multiple sources when no single document contains a complete response. With 15 engineers across the U.S. and Europe, the funding will roughly double headcount by year-end. Founders acknowledge the index's upkeep is costly but manageable as they position against larger competitors.