An AI Search Engine Startup raised $60 million in Oversized Seed Funding

Genspark, an AI-powered search engine has raised an impressive $60 million in oversized seed funding. This AI startup founded by former Baidu executives has joined a series of challengers to take on Google’s dominance in the search engine market.

Genspark taps generative AI to write custom summaries in response to search queries. This innovative search engine uses multiple AI model providers to index as well as summarize information.

In-house models and multiple specialised AI agents are utilised by this AI search engine. It categorizes users’ search queries and also determines how to organise and present the results. This approach delivers useful results on a single page, enhancing user experience. Genspark’s AI models favour webpages with high authority and popularity filtering out the more ‘out there’ information.

Genspark’s CEO, Eric Jing previously led Baidu’s AI-powered smartphone and smart speaker unit up until 2023. The startup’s team consisting of 20 people are split between Palo Alto, California and Singapore. Plans are also being made to expand the office to Seattle.

Singapore-based fund, Lanchi Ventures is leading the funding. It has valued the startup at $260 million but this does not include revenue. Lanchi Ventures was formally known as BlueRun Ventures China and it rebranded in 2023 to distance itself from its Silicon Valley origin BlueRun Ventures.

Currently focused on serving the U.S. market, Genspark is offering its search engine for free. However, the start-up has potential plans to introduce paid subscriptions in the future. It uses an array of language models to deal with tasks, from open-source options such as Meta’s Llama to OpenAI’s GPT models.

Competition in the Search Engine Market

Genspark’s funding comes right at the renewal of competition in the search engine market, as AI models show new ways for people to gather and access information on the internet. You.com, a rival search engine is close to raising another $50 million in funding. Meanwhile, Perplexity, which is already a unicorn, is in talks to procure additional funding.

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