Exa AI

Exa is a search API built for AI agents and applications rather than for people browsing in a browser. Instead of keyword matching like a conventional search engine, it uses embeddings to understand what a query actually means and returns pages that match that intent, then extracts concise "highlights" from those pages so an AI system gets relevant content without processing entire web pages, cutting token usage significantly. On top of core search, Exa offers a contents API for extraction, structured outputs that pull data points across a large index of companies, and a deep research mode for more thorough, multi-step lookups. Results are returned quickly, with source citations included so answers built on top of Exa can be traced back to where the information came from. It's built by Exa Labs, a company that raised an $85 million Series B round, and it's used by developer-facing products such as Cursor, OpenRouter, HubSpot, and Monday.com. Exa is aimed at developers building agents, research assistants, or data-enrichment workflows, not general consumers, since using it means integrating an API or MCP server into code rather than typing into a search box directly.