Startup San Francisco Onyx has raised 10 million USD in seed capital, currently serving dozens of large customers like Netflix and Ramp with an internal search tool.
In the context of businesses struggling with massive internal data volumes, Onyx is emerging as a potential enterprise search solution. This San Francisco-based startup is targeting the competitive enterprise search market with a differentiated strategy: developing an open-source model.
Onyx, initially developed under the name Danswer (a combination of "deep" and "answer"), allows businesses to deploy an internal search platform in around 30 minutes. This solution can connect to over 40 popular enterprise data sources like Salesforce, GitHub, and Google Drive, helping employees easily access the information they need.
Chris Weaver, the co-founder and co-CEO of Onyx, emphasized that the idea stemmed from their real-world experiences working in the tech field: "We knew what we were looking for, but it was still quite difficult, and new hires couldn't find anything."
From Failure to Success with AI and Open-Source
Onyx is not Weaver and co-founder Yuhong Sun's first startup venture. Their previous two projects—a Twitch streamer analytics app and a specialized keyboard comparison website—were unsuccessful. However, with Sun's machine learning background and the advancements in AI technology, Onyx quickly gained attention.
"Ramp was really one of the first teams to come to us," Sun shared. "At the time, we had no way for them to pay us. For us, that was a sign that people really wanted to pay for our project."
Currently, Onyx's client list includes big names like Netflix, Ramp, and Thales Group. The company has just raised 10 million USD in seed funding from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, and renowned angel investors like Gokul Rajaram (former Coinbase and Pinterest board member), Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox co-founder), and Amit Agarwal (former Datadog CPO).
Despite facing fierce competition from well-funded startups like Glean (which has raised 600 million USD) and homegrown solutions like Klarna's Kiki, Onyx believes its open-source strategy will provide a significant competitive advantage.
"Open-source is really the only way this solution can scale and create momentum in every business in the world," Weaver affirmed. This allows companies to experiment with the solution without going through a lengthy sales cycle.
With impressive metrics—peaking at 160,000 messages in a week—Onyx is proving its potential.
