Neeva, which started with a mission to “take search back to its users”, is closing down its search operations from June 2, 2023.
Announcing the shutdown, the company’s co-founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan lamented that building search engines is complex and when you are pitted against giants like Google, it gets harder still.
While Neeva accomplished its goal of building a search engine that “put user and not advertiser interests first”, it was harder to convince people to switch to it.
“From the unnecessary friction required to change default search settings to the challenges in helping people understand the difference between a search engine and a browser, acquiring users has been really hard,” said the co-founders.
It is interesting to note that Neeva was the first search engine to integrate LLMs into the search stack providing users with cited, real-time AI answers to a majority of queries.

“These headwinds, combined with the different economic environment, have made it clear that there is no longer a path towards creating a sustainable business in consumer search. As a result, over the next few weeks, we will be shutting down neeva.com and our consumer search product, and shifting to a new area of focus.”
The company is pivoting to AI and may be acquired by Snowflake, a major cloud database provider.
Those who have a paid subscription to Neeva Premium will receive a fund transfer for the unused portion of the subscription. The company is also deleting all the user data.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen the clear, pressing need to use LLMs effectively, inexpensively, safely, and responsibly. We are actively exploring how we can apply our search and LLM expertise in these settings, and we will provide updates on the future of our work and our team in the next few weeks.”
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