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You.com

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You.com
Type of site
Enterprise AI
HeadquartersPalo Alto, California, U.S.
Founder(s)Richard Socher
Bryan McCann
URLyou.com
LaunchedNovember 9, 2021; 3 years ago (2021-11-09)
Current statusLive

You.com is an artificial intelligence search startup that has pivoted away from consumer search engine operations toward business-focused AI tools and APIs.[1][2]

The company was founded in 2020 by Richard Socher,[3][4] the former Chief Scientist at Salesforce and a prominent Natural Language Processing researcher with over 220,000 citations,[5] and Bryan McCann,[6][7] a former Lead Research Scientist in NLP at Salesforce.

History

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Following its 2020 founding, You.com opened its public beta on November 9, 2021,[8] and received $20 million in funding led by Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff.[6][9] Other investors include Breyer Capital, Sound Ventures, and Day One Ventures.[10]

The domain You.com was initially purchased in 1996 by Benioff.[11] Benioff invested in You.com and transferred ownership of the You.com domain name to the company.[10]

In July 2022, You.com announced its $25 million Series A funding round led by Radical Ventures[12] with participation from Time Ventures, Breyer Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Day One Ventures.[13]

In September 2024, You.com raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Georgian.[14] In September 2025, You.com raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Cox Enterprises at a $1.5 billion valuation, achieving unicorn status.[1]

Features

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On December 23, 2022, You.com was the first search engine to launch a ChatGPT-style chatbot with live web results alongside its responses.[15][16][17] Initially known as YouChat,[18] the chatbot was primarily based on the GPT-3.5 large language model and could answer questions, suggest ideas,[19] translate text,[20] summarize articles, compose emails, and write code snippets, while staying up-to-date with current events [17] and citing sources. Several further versions of YouChat were released. The second version, called YouChat 2.0, was released on February 7, 2023,[21][22] incorporated improved conversational AI[23] and community-built applications by blending a large language model named C-A-L (Chat, Apps, and Links).[23][18] This update enabled YouChat to provide results in various formats, such as charts,[24] photos,[25] videos, tables, graphs, text or code, so users can find answers without leaving the search results page. YouChat 3.0, unveiled on May 4, 2023,[26] combined chat functionality with results from Reddit, TikTok, Stack Overflow and Wikipedia.

YouPro

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On June 21, 2023, You.com introduced YouPro, a paid subscription.[27] Both free and paid versions provide access to large language models connected to the internet with citation capabilities.[28]

Reception

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You.com was named one of Time's "The Best Inventions of 2022."[29][30]

References

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  1. ^ a b Zaveri, Paayal (September 3, 2025). "You.com Becomes a Unicorn, Shifts Away From Search Engine Plans". Bloomberg News.
  2. ^ Pierce, David (September 25, 2023). "The AI assistant revolution is more than 50 years in the making". The Verge.
  3. ^ Miller, Ron. "You.com takes aim at Google and Microsoft with multimodal chat search". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 10, 2023.
  4. ^ Miller, Ron (December 8, 2020). "Former Salesforce chief scientist announces new search engine to take on Google". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
  5. ^ "Google Scholar, Richard Socher". Google Scholar. Retrieved April 7, 2024.
  6. ^ a b Wiggers, Kyle (November 9, 2021). "AI-driven search engine You.com takes on Google with $20M". VentureBeat. Retrieved March 22, 2022.
  7. ^ "Bryan McCann". Google Scholar.
  8. ^ Robertson, Adi (November 9, 2021). "You.com wants to remake the search engine". The Verge. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  9. ^ Baranouski, Artsiom (January 30, 2024). "Top 10 Salesforce SPQ Alternatives for the North American Market". Medium. Retrieved February 1, 2024.
  10. ^ a b Paresh, Dave (November 9, 2021). "Salesforce CEO Benioff invests in search engine startup You.com". Reuters.
  11. ^ Pardes, Arielle (March 31, 2023). "Search Has Its Goliath. Could Richard Socher Be Its David?". The Information. Retrieved April 7, 2023.
  12. ^ Primack, Dan (July 14, 2022). "You.com raises $25 million to challenge Google's search dominance". Axios. Retrieved April 7, 2023.
  13. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (July 14, 2022). "You raises $25M to fuel its AI-powered search engine". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 7, 2024.
  14. ^ Coldewey, Devin (September 4, 2024). "With $50M in new funding, You.com thinks its AI can beat Google on hard questions". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 28, 2025.
  15. ^ Kahn, Imad (December 23, 2022). "Search Engine You.com Launches ChatGPT-Style Chatbot, But Don't Trust It Fully Yet". CNET. Retrieved April 7, 2024.
  16. ^ Kulp, Patrick (January 24, 2024). "How this early LLM researcher is taking on ChatGPT with his own search engine". Tech Brew.
  17. ^ a b Hachman, Mark. "You.com's AI-infused Google rival provides a tantalizing glimpse of the future". PCWorld.
  18. ^ a b Eliaçık, Eray. "You.com's AI-powered features are already in use, unlike Google". Dataconomy.
  19. ^ You.com (May 10, 2023). "Introducing YouChat — The AI Search Assistant that Lives in Your Search Engine". Medium.
  20. ^ Roth, Emma. "Meet the companies trying to keep up with ChatGPT". The Verge.
  21. ^ You.com (May 10, 2023). "Introducing YouChat 2.0 — Unlock the Power of AI with the Search Assistant that Works for You". Medium.
  22. ^ Nuñez, Michael. "VentureBeat Q&A: Richard Socher, cofounder and CEO of You.com, says Google is facing a classic innovator's dilemma". VentureBeat.
  23. ^ a b Nuñez, Michael. "You.com challenges Google, Microsoft with launch of 'multimodal conversational AI' in search". VentureBeat.
  24. ^ Özergin, Özgürcan. "How to use You.com: YouChat, YouImagine, and more". TechBriefly.
  25. ^ Deutscher, Maria. "You.com debuts multimodal AI chatbot for search". SiliconANGLE.
  26. ^ "YouChat 3.0 is here — Experience the Ultimate Chat Search". You.com. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
  27. ^ Press, Gil (June 21, 2023). "You.com Launches Subscription Service For Cutting-Edge Generative AI Search Chatbot". Forbes.
  28. ^ Oritz, Sabrina (March 20, 2024). "YouPro lets me access every popular premium AI chatbot for $20/month - but there's a catch". ZDNET.
  29. ^ "The Best Inventions of 2022". Time. Retrieved April 7, 2024.
  30. ^ Mullich, Joe (November 10, 2022). "Ad-free Search You.com". Time.
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