Why Onyx thinks that its open source solution will gain a business search

Companies have internal data and information trucks that employees need to carry out their tasks or answer questions for potential customers. But that does not mean that the right information is easy to find.

Onyx wishes to solve this problem via its internal business search tool. There are other big names in the category, such as Glean – which has raised $ 600 million in venture capital funding- The fight for market share in the hot category, but Onyx based in San Francisco has a differentializer who helps to separate him from the pack, he says. It’s open source.

Companies can operate Onyx in about 30 minutes, and it connects to more than 40 internal data sources of the company, including Salesforce, Github and Google Drive. Company users can then pay additional levels of features such as increased connection safety and increased encryption.

Chris Weaver, co-founder and Co-PDG of Onyx, told Techcrunch that he and his co-founder and co-PDG Yuhong Sun had initially undertook a problem that he and Sun saw in their respective engineering roles.

“We knew where things were roughly, but it was still a little difficult, [and] New people could not find anything, ”said Weaver. “It was as if there was a better way to do it.”

Onyx is not Weaver and Sun’s first attempt to create a business. Their first idea, a live statistics monitoring application for Twitch streamers, was fine until Twitch kills integrated flows and makes the product essentially unusable. Their second effort, a site to help people compare specialized keyboards, did not work either.

But with Sun automatic learning history and the global progress of AI technology, ONYX – originally called inwer, a portman for a deep response – was different. They published the original Open-Source project in 2023 and immediately received strong dynamics and feedback.

“Ramp was actually one of the first teams that found us,” said Sun. “At the time, we had no way for them to pay ourselves or anything. We had nothing like supporting plans or something else, and there was no paid functionality. For us, it was like, people really want to pay our project. I mean, it’s free, but people want to pay for it. So you know, there may be a chance to make it a business. »»

Today, the company works with dozens of companies, including Netflix, Ramp and Thales Group. Sun and Weaver greatly attributes the success of the company to its decision to open the software. It allowed companies to experiment and also avoid a long business sales cycle.

“Open source is really the only way for this type of solution to develop and get momentum in each business company,” said Weaver.

Although confident that open source is the winning strategy for internal research, the team enters a competitive field. Beyond startups like Glean, but they face competition from companies that build their own internal solutions, such as Fintech Klarna, which has built a internal search tool and chatbot, kiki.

Onyx is not dissuaded. Starting an internal research tool from zero is really difficult, said Weaver, and he thinks we have a fundamental tool for companies wishing to create their own internal research products. He said the proof was in the figures.

“We have seen the use grow explosively,” said Sun. “We have reached a peak of more than 160,000 messages in a single week. We really hope to rely on this organic growth and, hope, all the world teams will use Onyx one day. »»

The company also recently attracted a round of seeds of $ 10 million co-directed by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital, with the participation of Y Combinator and providential investors. Among them, Gokul Rajaram, former member of the board of directors of Coinbase and Pinterest; Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox; And Amit Agarwal, the former product manager of Datadog.

Onyx plans to use funds to hire and develop above -end features.