AI Search Startup Genspark Secures $100M Funding, Challenging Google's Dominance

AI search engine startup Genspark reportedly raises $100M at $530M valuation - SiliconANGLE

AI search engine startup Genspark reportedly raises $100M at $530M valuation Genspark, an artificial intelligence search startup that competes with Google LLC, has reportedly raised $100 million in funding. Reuters today cited sources as saying that the round was led by a group of U.S. and Singapore-based investors. The deal reportedly values Genspark at $530 million, more than twice what it was worth in June. Genspark, officially Mainfunc Inc., launched last year with $60 million in initial funding. Its namesake search engine topped one million monthly users in November. Sources told Reuters that Genspark now has two million users, which was likely one of the factors behind the steep increase in the company's valuation. Genspark's search engine uses large language models to process queries. When a user types in a question, the service doesn't return a list of relevant webpages but rather displays a natural language answer. Genspark organizes each of its prompt responses into a webpage called Sparkpages that allows users to ask followup questions. The company also offers a number of specialized search features. One capability is geared towards browsing e-commerce websites' product listings. Another tool, Genspark Finance, visualizes data from earnings reports in graphs to ease analysis. One of the latest additions to the search engine's feature set is a capability called Deep Research. It provides more detailed answers to user queries at the cost of increased wait times: Genspark says that a prompt response can take up to 30 minutes to generate. According to the company, the feature spends that time analyzing more than one million words' worth of information from over one thousand sources. Under the hood, Genspark's search engine is powered by what it describes as a mixture-of-agent architecture. The software sends each user query to LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic PBC and Google. Genspark removes inconsistencies between the models' responses and then combines them into a single answer. Today's report didn't specify how the company plans to spend its newly raised funding. One possibility is that Genspark could add reasoning-optimized LLMs to the lineup of models it uses to process prompts. According to a Feb. 10 blog post, the company's search engine relies on GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Gemini 2.0 Flash to answer queries. Those are midrange LLMs that balance output quality with hardware efficiency. Adding a more hardware-intensive, reasoning-optimized model such as OpenAI's o1 to the list could potentially help Genspark enhance its search engine's output.

AI startup Genspark raises $100 million to compete with Google, source says

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Search startup Genspark has raised $100 million in a series A funding round, valuing the startup at $530 million, according to a source familiar with the matter, as the race to use artificial intelligence to disrupt Google's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab stranglehold on the search engine market heats up. The Palo Alto-based company currently has over 2 million monthly active users, and the round was led by a group of U.S. and Singapore-based investors, the source said. The company raised a $60 million seed round last June. Its CEO Eric Jing led Baidu's (9888.HK), opens new tab AI-powered smartphone and smart speaker Xiaodu unit. Genspark is one of a number of startups attempting to uproot the search engine market dominated by Alphabet's Google. AI-generated search results can offer a single answer with citations, a potential user experience improvement compared to Google's link lists. Google itself is experimenting with AI search results, while OpenAI's ChatGPT recently integrated internet search capabilities. Another big player in the AI search space, Perplexity, has raised funds valuing it at $9 billion. According to its blog, Genspark says it has developed a feature capable of using multiple AI models that work together to conduct in-depth research online. OpenAI, Perplexity and You.com have also released similar products. Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Stephen Coates Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence Anna Tong Thomson Reuters Anna Tong is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where she reports on the technology industry. She joined Reuters in 2023 after working at the San Francisco Standard as a data editor. Tong previously worked at technology startups as a product manager and at Google where she worked in user insights and helped run a call center. Tong graduated from Harvard University.