Keenable, founded by former Yandex search executive Andrey Styskin and AI scientist Matthias Petri, emerged from stealth with $26 million in seed funding led by Accel, with participation from Conviction Partners and angel investors. The startup is building web search infrastructure specifically designed for AI chatbots and agents, arguing that existing search tools were optimized for human browsing rather than the larger-scale information processing AI systems require.
Styskin said AI chatbots perform better when responses are grounded in source documents, creating demand patterns distinct from those Google built its search business around. Keenable has constructed a web index exceeding 100 billion documents, with its API already deployed in production at AI labs and inference providers, including a recent partnership with voice AI company Gradium. Styskin, drawing on two decades of search experience at Yandex and Amazon, said the company’s advantage lay in narrowing search space efficiently for specific queries rather than scanning the full internet at prohibitive cost.
Accel partner Zhenya Loginov, who led the investment, said AI companies currently have limited web-scale search infrastructure options as Google and Microsoft restrict their existing search APIs. Keenable, currently employing 15 engineers across the US and Europe, plans to double its headcount using the new funding while developing additional retrieval tools for AI systems.
Featured image: Credit: Keenable
