Organizations possess vast amounts of internal data and resources that employees require to perform their duties or respond to inquiries from potential clients. However, locating the correct information can often be a challenge.
Onyx aims to tackle this issue with its enterprise search solution. While competitors like Glean, which has secured $600 million in venture capital, also vie for market attention in this growing sector, Onyx, based in San Francisco, distinguishes itself by being open source.
Implementing Onyx can be accomplished within approximately 30 minutes, and it seamlessly integrates with over 40 internal data sources from companies, including Salesforce, GitHub, and Google Drive. Enterprise clients can opt for enhanced features such as improved sign-in security and advanced encryption for an additional fee.
Chris Weaver, co-founder and co-CEO of Onyx, shared with TechCrunch that both he and his co-founder, Yuhong Sun, were driven to address a challenge they encountered in their previous engineering roles.
“We had a rough sense of where things were, but it was still quite challenging; new employees struggled to find anything,” Weaver stated. “It seemed like there had to be a more efficient solution.”
This isn’t Weaver and Sun’s first entrepreneurial endeavor. Their initial concept was a live statistics tracking app for Twitch streamers, which gained traction until Twitch halted embedded streams, leaving the product virtually obsolete. Their second attempt was a website aimed at comparing specialty keyboards, but that venture also fell short.
However, backed by Sun’s expertise in machine learning and the advancements in AI technology, Onyx — formerly known as Danswer, a blend of “deep” and “answer” — marked a departure from their earlier projects. The initial open-source version was launched in 2023, quickly garnering positive engagement and momentum.
“Ramp was actually one of the first teams that discovered us,” Sun noted. “At that point, we had no monetization strategies, no support plans, and no paid features. The fact that people wanted to financially support our project—despite it being free—suggested to us that there might be an opportunity to build a business from it.”
Today, Onyx collaborates with numerous enterprises, including Netflix, Ramp, and Thales Group. Both Sun and Weaver attribute their success to the decision to open source their software, which has enabled companies to experiment and bypass lengthy sales processes.
“Open source truly is the only viable method for this kind of solution to expand and gain traction across all businesses globally,” Weaver asserted.
While the team is optimistic about their open-source model being a winning approach, they are entering a competitive landscape. They not only compete with startups like Glean but also with corporations, such as Klarna, which have developed their own internal solutions, like the Kiki internal search and chatbot tool.
Onyx remains undaunted. Weaver mentioned that creating an internal search tool from scratch is quite complex, and he views Onyx as a fundamental resource for companies aspiring to create their own search solutions. He believes that the results speak for themselves.
“We have seen explosive growth in usage,” Sun remarked. “We reached a peak of over 160,000 messages in just one week. We aim to harness this organic growth, with hopes that teams all around the world will one day adopt Onyx.”
The company also recently secured a $10 million seed round co-led by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital, with contributions from Y Combinator and various angel investors, including Gokul Rajaram, a former board member of Coinbase and Pinterest; Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox; and Amit Agarwal, former chief product officer of Datadog.
Onyx plans to utilize these funds to expand its team and develop more advanced features.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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