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Snowflake acquires Neeva to bring intelligent search to its cloud data management solution

He noted that Neeva's ability to harness generative AI in research was one of the things that drew Snowflake to start the research. "That's why Snowflake acquir

Snowflake is all about managing data in the cloud, whether as part of a structured data warehouse or a less structured data lake. Neeva, a search startup of two ex-Googlers, has been focused on search, working on both consumer and business offerings. Earlier this week, it announced that she would be moving away from consumer pursuit to focus on enterprise.

Today, Snowflake announced that it will buy the startup. The two companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Rumors had recently been circulating about Snowflake's interest in Neeva before the two companies made it official in a blog post on Snowflake's website this afternoon. Benoit Dageville, the company's co-founder and vice president of products, explained why he believes the companies are such a good fit.

“The ability of teams to discover the right data point, data source or insight is critical to maximizing the value of data,” Dageville wrote in the blog post.

He noted that Neeva's ability to harness generative AI in research was one of the things that drew Snowflake to start the research. "That's why Snowflake acquired Neeva, a search company founded to make search smarter at scale," he wrote. With AI formative searches, users can ask questions and interact with the search tool, fundamentally changing the way people search.

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In fact, the company was working on a standalone AI search application called Gist when it shut down. In a blog post announcing that the company is shutting down consumer research, the founders indicated that it has technology that it can use in enterprise products, and that's where it will focus going forward.

"Many of the technologies we've pioneered with small forms, small footprint, low latency, and inexpensive deployment are things organizations really want and need today. We're actively exploring how we can apply our research and expertise to these environments, and we will provide updates on the future of our work and our team in the coming weeks, the founders wrote on their blog.

But as it turns out, it was a parting note as an independent company, and he's going to do this corporate investigative work as part of Snowflake. Neeva had a lot of work to do when it launched in hopes of offering an ad-free search tool that would solve the privacy issues inherent in most consumer search tools. The two founders spent years grinding their teeth at Google and brought that experience to the startup. They have raised more than $77 million since the company was founded in 2019, according to Crunchbase. The most recent round of $40 million came just over two years ago. Investors include Sequoia and Greylock.

Now as part of Snowflake, the founders bring a wealth of experience to the company to help build an AI search solution as well as a cloud data management solution. The dream of building a competitor to Google may have died with the end of the consumer search tool, but the technology could live on in future Snowflake search solutions.

Also Read: Apple supplier Wistron stops making iPhones in India, report says

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