Description
You.com
Overview
You.com is the pioneering AI search engine that was the first to launch an LLM chatbot with live web results (December 2022, before ChatGPT added browsing). Founded in 2020 by Richard Socher (former Chief Scientist at Salesforce, 4th most-cited NLP researcher with 180K+ citations) and Bryan McCann, it has evolved from a consumer search engine to an enterprise AI platform and search infrastructure.
In September 2025, You.com achieved unicorn status with a $1.5 billion valuation after raising $100M in Series C led by Cox Enterprises. Total funding: ~$200M. 2024 Revenue: $50M with 500% ARR growth.
ARI (Advanced Research & Insights), launched in February 2025, was named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025 - the first deep research agent capable of processing 500+ sources and generating professional-grade reports in minutes, outperforming OpenAI Deep Research in 76% of head-to-head tests.
Evolution and Milestones
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2020 | Founded by Richard Socher and Bryan McCann |
| Nov 2021 | Public beta, $20M funding (Marc Benioff) |
| Jul 2022 | Series A $25M (Radical Ventures) |
| Dec 2022 | First search engine with LLM chatbot + live web |
| Feb 2023 | YouChat 2.0 with C-A-L model |
| May 2023 | YouChat 3.0 (Reddit, TikTok, Stack Overflow) |
| Jun 2023 | YouPro launch |
| Jan 2024 | AI Modes (Smart, Genius, Create, Research) |
| Sep 2024 | Series B $50M (Georgian), $99M total |
| Feb 2025 | ARI launched (500+ sources, deep research) |
| May 2025 | ARI Enterprise |
| Sep 2025 | Series C $100M, unicorn $1.5B |
| Oct 2025 | ARI named TIME Best Invention 2025 |
Recognition
| Award | Year |
|---|---|
| TIME Best Inventions | 2022 |
| WEF Technology Pioneers | 2024 |
| TIME Best Inventions (ARI) | 2025 |
Founders
Richard Socher - CEO & Co-founder
| Aspect | Detail |
|---|---|
| Background | Chief Scientist & EVP at Salesforce |
| Academia | Stanford PhD, best CS thesis 2014 |
| Citations | 180,000+ (4th most-cited in NLP) |
| Contributions | Word embeddings, contextual vectors, prompt engineering |
| Awards | ICML 2011 Best Paper, ACL 2023 Test of Time, PAMI Longuet-Higgins Prize ImageNet |
| Previous Startup | MetaMind (acquired by Salesforce) |
| Investments | AIX Ventures (7+ unicorns in portfolio) |
Bryan McCann - CTO & Co-founder
| Aspect | Detail |
|---|---|
| Background | Lead AI Research Scientist at Salesforce |
| Specialty | NLP, model architectures |
Products and Services
Consumer Platform
AI Modes (since Jan 2024)
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Smart | Default, quick answers with live web |
| Genius | Multi-step problems, complex reasoning |
| Research | Comprehensive reports with citations |
| Create | Image generation and visualizations |
Available Models (YouPro)
| Provider | Models |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | GPT-4, GPT-4o |
| Anthropic | Claude 3, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude Opus |
| Gemini 1.5 Pro | |
| Meta | Llama 3 |
| DeepSeek | DeepSeek R1 |
ARI (Advanced Research & Insights)
Launched February 2025
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Simultaneous sources | 500+ (vs 30-40 competitors) |
| Delivery time | ~5 minutes for complete reports |
| vs OpenAI Deep Research | 76% win rate head-to-head |
| FRAMES Benchmark | 80% accuracy (highest known) |
| Output | Professional PDF with visualizations |
ARI Capabilities
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Multi-source analysis | Web + internal data + premium databases |
| Chain-of-thought reasoning | Extended reasoning with test-time compute |
| Interactive visualizations | Charts, graphs, dynamic tables |
| Verified citations | Verifiable sources |
| Human-in-the-loop | Editing, section regeneration |
| Custom branding | Export with company branding |
ARI Enterprise (May 2025)
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Internal data integration | Private documents |
| Premium databases | Industry-specific data |
| Model-agnostic reasoning | Proprietary filtering layer |
| Customizable reports | Personalized branding and format |
| Zero data retention | Option to not store data |
Enterprise APIs
Web Search API
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Monthly queries | 1B+ processed |
| Uptime | 99.9% |
| Latency | <445ms |
| Optimization | LLM-native, RAG-ready |
| Clients | DuckDuckGo, Alibaba, Amazon |
| Fortune 500 | 57% are customers |
API Suite
| API | Description |
|---|---|
| Web Search | Real-time search with snippets |
| News Search | News from 100s of publishers |
| Image Search | 100s of millions of images |
| Contents API | Full page text and metadata |
| Deep Search | High-precision excerpts |
| Generation API | Deep research, images, computation |
Enterprise Integrations
| Platform | Description |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | Core search provider integrated |
| Databricks | Unity Catalog, MCP Marketplace |
| AWS | Marketplace integration |
| Zapier | 8,000+ connectable apps |
Pricing (2025)
Consumer
Free
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Unlimited Smart Agent | ✅ |
| Premium AI Agents | Limited/day |
| GPT-4, Claude 3, Gemini Pro | Limited/day |
YouPro - $15/mo ($180/year)
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| All AI Agents unlimited | ✅ |
| GPT-4, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini | Unlimited |
| DeepSeek R1, Llama 3 | Unlimited |
| Unlimited image generation | ✅ |
| Unlimited writing generation | ✅ |
| Unlimited uploads | ✅ |
| Priority uptime | ✅ |
| Early access APIs/models | ✅ |
| Custom Agents | ✅ |
| Personalized ML | ✅ |
YouPro for Education - $6.99/mo
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Everything in YouPro | ✅ |
| Requires educational email | ✅ |
Enterprise/API
Pay-as-you-go
| Tier | Description |
|---|---|
| Free Trial | 1,000 API calls |
| Usage-based | No minimums, auto-scaling |
| Volume Discounts | Lower rates with more usage |
| Annual Commits | Discounts for annual commitment |
Enterprise Custom
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Custom data indexing | ✅ |
| Vertical indexes | ✅ |
| Dedicated support | ✅ |
| SLAs | ✅ |
| SOC 2 compliance | ✅ |
| Zero data retention | ✅ |
Metrics and Growth
Users and Engagement
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Queries served | 1B+ |
| Active users | Millions |
| Monthly API calls | 1B+ |
| Custom agents created | 50,000+ |
| ARR growth (2024) | 500% |
Financials
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Revenue 2024 | $50M |
| Total Funding | ~$200M |
| Valuation (Sep 2025) | $1.5B (unicorn) |
| Employees | ~318 |
Funding
Investment Rounds
| Date | Round | Amount | Lead Investor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2021 | Seed | $20M | Marc Benioff (Time Ventures) |
| Jul 2022 | Series A | $25M | Radical Ventures |
| Sep 2024 | Series B | $50M | Georgian |
| Sep 2025 | Series C | $100M | Cox Enterprises (Socium) |
| Total | ~$200M |
Notable Investors
- Marc Benioff (Time Ventures, Salesforce founder)
- Salesforce Ventures
- NVIDIA
- Georgian
- Radical Ventures
- DuckDuckGo
- Breyer Capital
- Sound Ventures
- Day One Ventures
- Norwest Venture Partners
- SBVA (Softbank Ventures Asia)
- Gen Digital
Historical Note
The You.com domain was originally purchased in 1996 by Marc Benioff, who transferred it to the company as part of his investment.
Technology
Architecture
| Component | Detail |
|---|---|
| Model Orchestration | Routing to different LLMs based on query |
| Proprietary models | C-A-L (Chat, Apps, Links) |
| Third-party models | GPT-3, GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama |
| Web Index | Real-time, web-scale |
| RAG optimization | Structured outputs for LLMs |
Innovations
| Innovation | Description |
|---|---|
| First LLM chatbot + live web | Dec 2022, before ChatGPT |
| Model routing | Automatic best model selection |
| Multimodal search | Text, images, video |
| 500+ source processing | ARI unique in industry |
Enterprise Clients
Highlights
| Industry | Clients |
|---|---|
| Tech | DuckDuckGo, Alibaba, Amazon |
| Healthcare | Wort & Bild Verlag (Germany) |
| Government | NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis |
| Consulting | Multiple consulting firms |
| Finance | Hedge funds, advisory firms |
Statistics
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total customers | 3,000+ |
| Fortune 500 | 57% |
| Tech unicorns | Multiple |
Use Cases
Consumer
- Conversational search with citations
- Multi-source research
- AI image generation
- Writing assistance
- Coding assistance
- Multi-step problem solving
Enterprise
- Deep research for consulting
- Market research for finance
- Due diligence for investments
- Content analysis for media
- Grant research for academia
- Regulatory research for legal
Developer/API
- RAG grounding for AI apps
- Agentic workflows
- Coding agents with updated docs
- Document search with citations
- News aggregation
- Image search
PROS ✅
- Pioneer LLM Search - First with chatbot + live web (Dec 2022)
- ARI - 500+ sources, TIME Best Invention 2025
- 76% win rate vs OpenAI Deep Research
- Multi-model access - GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama in one place
- Unicorn - $1.5B valuation, market validated
- Enterprise-grade API - 99.9% uptime, 1B+ queries/mo
- Expert founders - Socher 180K citations, ex-Salesforce
- Verified citations - Transparency and trust
- Generous free tier - Unlimited Smart Agent
- $15/mo YouPro - Cheaper than ChatGPT Plus ($20)
- 57% Fortune 500 as API customers
- Integrations - OpenAI, Databricks, AWS, Zapier
CONS ❌
- Consumer to enterprise pivot - Less focus on consumer product
- Intense competition - Google, Perplexity, ChatGPT
- Opaque API pricing - Enterprise requires contacting sales
- Complex UI - Many modes and options
- ARI Enterprise costly - Pricing per report, not per token
- Less known - Lower brand awareness than competitors
- Limited documentation - For enterprise especially
vs Competitors
| vs | You.com Wins | Competitor Wins |
|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | ARI depth (500+ sources), enterprise API | Brand awareness, UX simplicity |
| ChatGPT | First LLM+web (2022), citations, $15 vs $20 | Native GPT-4, OpenAI ecosystem |
| Google AI | Independence, privacy, enterprise API | Scale, Google Suite integration |
| Microsoft Copilot | Model flexibility, citations | Office 365 integration |
When to Use Each
| Tool | Best For |
|---|---|
| You.com | Enterprise research, API for AI apps |
| Perplexity | Quick consumer search |
| ChatGPT | General purpose, coding |
| Google AI | Google ecosystem integration |
Company Information
- Name: You.com (SuSea, Inc.)
- Founded: 2020
- Headquarters: Palo Alto, California
- Employees: ~318
- Total Funding: ~$200M
- Valuation: $1.5B (unicorn, Sep 2025)
- Revenue 2024: $50M
Platforms
| Platform | Availability |
|---|---|
| Web | you.com |
| iOS | App Store |
| Android | Google Play |
| Chrome Extension | Chrome Web Store |
| API | api.you.com |
Future and Vision
Strategy 2025+
- Enterprise-first - Complete pivot from consumer to B2B
- AI agent ecosystem - 50K+ custom agents created
- API expansion - Vertical indexes, custom data
- ARI evolution - More industries, more depth
Vision
"When every employee has instant access to comprehensive, validated insights that previously required teams of consultants and weeks of work, it changes the speed and quality of business decision-making." - Richard Socher
Key Features
First LLM search with live web (Dec 2022)
ARI deep research agent 500+ sources
AI Modes Smart Genius Research Create
Multi-model GPT-4 Claude Gemini Llama
Web Search API 99.9% uptime 1B+ queries
YouPro $15/mo all models unlimited
Custom Agents 50K+ created
Verified transparent citations
Enterprise private data integration
ARI Enterprise customized reports
Model orchestration automatic routing
News Search API global publishers
Image Search API millions of images
Contents API full page metadata
Integrations OpenAI Databricks AWS
Zapier 8000+ connectable apps
RAG-ready structured LLM outputs
Zero data retention enterprise
Chrome extension assisted search
Mobile apps iOS Android
Use Cases
Deep research consulting reports
Market research financial analysis
Due diligence investments M&A
Content analysis media communications
Grant research scientific academia
Regulatory research legal compliance
RAG grounding AI applications
Agentic workflows automation
Coding agents updated documentation
News aggregation breaking stories
Competitive intelligence market
Product research comparisons
Academic research citations
Healthcare research publications
Legal document analysis contracts
Financial analysis reports
Technical documentation search
Customer support knowledge base
Sales enablement competitive
Marketing research trends