Sridhar Ramaswamy
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Neeva, the privacy-focused research company co-founded by former Google Leader Sridhar Ramaswamy announced on Saturday that he was shutting down his consumer search engine and focusing on exploring use cases for artificial intelligence.
In a blog post on the company’s website, Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, another co-founder of Neeva, wrote that “user acquisition has been very difficult”. They said this challenge, in addition to the “different economic environment”, made it clear that a consumer research business is not sustainable.
“This was a very difficult decision that took into account many factors: the progress of our business thus far, the current funding environment, and our ability to continue to grow rapidly in this significantly changed research environment,” said Ramaswamy said in a statement. Tweeter SATURDAY.
A representative for Neeva did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ramaswamy created Neeva in 2019 after leaving his role as senior vice president of Google’s advertising business a year earlier, which he said was disillusionment with the company’s relentless focus on maintaining growth at the expense of users.
Neeva will explore use cases for generative AI and large language models in research going forward, according to the post. Neeva.com and its consumer search product will be shut down for the next few weeks.
Neeva users with a paid subscription to Neeva Premium will receive a refund for the unused portion, and the company is also deleting all user data as part of the shutdown, Ramaswamy and Raghunathan said in the blog post.
The executives said they would have more to share on Neeva’s future in the coming weeks.
[colabot2]
Source link