Andi
YC W22San Francisco, US Β· Founded 2021 Β· 2 employees Β· 5 known investors
Andi AI is an AI-powered search engine that uses proprietary indexing technology to deliver search results with fact-verified answers. It serves individual users and developers through both consumer search and API products, competing in the AI search market.
Also known as LazyWeb Β· Andi AI Β· Andi AI Search Β· Andi Search Β· andi.co Β· andisearch.com
Founders & leadershipΒ· Y Combinator alumni (W22)
Andi was founded in 2021 by Angela Hoover and Jed White.
Investors Β· 5
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The YC applicationΒ· Winter 2022 batch
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Andi AI operates a consumer AI search engine and, more recently, a search API for developers and AI agents. Rather than returning ranked links alone, the product synthesizes direct answers from multiple sources and offers read, summarize, explain and text-generation modes, alongside conventional and visual results. The consumer service is positioned as free, ad-free and privacy-preserving: the company states it does not log or track searches, requires no account or credit card, and does not share data with third parties. Distribution includes a web app at andisearch.com and a Chrome extension.
The company's stated technical differentiator is Trantora, a proprietary index of roughly 25 billion web pages that the company says is built without relying on Google or Bing results. According to Andi, Trantora analyzes full page content at ingestion for meaning, credibility and quality β the company site cites 450+ data points per page in its FAQ and 1,400+ in a February 2026 blog post β filters 40-50 million spam and AI-generated pages daily, extracts verified claims into a knowledge graph from authoritative sources, and is queried alongside an ensemble of language models to produce answers. Andi claims 87% accuracy on independent search benchmarks (attributed to a SearchBench AI evaluation), compared with cited figures of 71% for Google, 80% for You.com, 62% for ChatGPT and 59% for Perplexity.
The Andi Search API exposes the same index via REST endpoints for search and page fetch, with automatic search-mode selection (fast, balanced, deep, exhaustive, low-cost), sub-second responses in fast mode, multi-query fan-out of up to five queries per call, LLM-oriented markdown output for RAG pipelines, and a remote MCP server for coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code. The interface is described as compatible with Google Custom Search and OpenSearch to ease migration. The company also maintains community channels (Discord, Reddit r/AskAndi, GitHub) and side projects including AIRun, an open-source CLI for executable markdown AI prompts, and a free YC Application Advisor web app.
Founding story
Angela Hoover and Jed White began building Andi in 2021, connecting language models to the internet for search roughly two years before ChatGPT's release. Their stated motivation was that web search quality was deteriorating β results buried under ads and SEO spam β while AI chatbots hallucinated confidently and most competing products simply attached language models to existing, flawed result sets, leading them to build a new index from scratch.
Business model
Two-sided product portfolio: a free consumer search engine with an unannounced premium tier ("Andi Plus", listed as coming soon), and a paid developer/agent search API. API pricing is outcome-based β charged according to the retrieval effort a query required rather than a flat per-call rate β with each JSON response reporting the exact charge in a metrics.cost_dollars field.
API revenue via prepaid credits and subscription tiers: a free Developer tier with $5 credit, one API key and 10 req/s; a Team tier at $49/month including $50 of monthly credits, up to five API keys, 25 req/s and five team members; and a custom-priced Enterprise tier with unlimited keys, custom rate limits, zero data retention and dedicated support. The company advertises under 1 cent per query at scale. Consumer search is free, with a paid "Andi Plus" tier announced as coming soon.
Traction
The company reports over 1 million users of the free consumer search product. For the API, it reported at launch that six Y Combinator startups were using it in production after head-to-head benchmarks against Perplexity, Brave, Tavily and other search APIs, with 45 more companies on the waitlist. Media coverage is claimed from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company, PCMag, Yahoo Finance and Search Engine Journal.
Latest developments
In a February 2026 announcement, Andi opened early access to its Search API, completed its domain migration from andi.co to andiai.com with all old URLs redirecting, and shipped an agent-readable website (Accept: text/markdown content negotiation, .md URLs, llms.txt). The API adds a fetch endpoint, multi-query search, MCP server integration for Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code, and outcome-based pricing. A premium consumer tier, Andi Plus, is listed as coming soon.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Positions itself as an accuracy-first alternative to both traditional search engines and AI search products that layer language models over Google or Bing results, claiming the top spot on independent accuracy benchmarks and citing PCMag's #1 AI Search Engine designation (2025) and Top Free AI Search Engine rating (January 2026). The company frames itself as capital-efficient, noting it has raised roughly $3M while claiming higher accuracy than Perplexity, which it says has raised over $1.5B.
Owning the index rather than reselling Google or Bing results; credibility and meaning scoring applied at ingestion rather than post-hoc filtering; fact extraction into a knowledge graph with verification before answer generation; no ads, tracking or search logging; automatic per-query search-mode selection and outcome-based API pricing; and machine-readable site and API surfaces designed for autonomous agent onboarding.
Technology
Trantora, a proprietary AI search index named after Asimov's Trantor and its Galactic Library, covering about 25 billion pages. It scores pages for meaning, credibility and quality at ingestion (450+ or 1,400+ data points per page, per differing company statements), filters spam before indexing, extracts facts into a knowledge graph and verifies information before answering. Answers are synthesized by an ensemble of language models. Developer surface includes REST /api/v1/search and /api/v1/fetch endpoints, an OpenSearch/Google CSE-compatible endpoint, JSON and LLM-ready markdown (format=context) outputs, and a streamable-HTTP MCP server authenticated with an x-api-key header. The website itself was rebuilt on Astro 5 with serverless functions, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4 and MDX content collections.
Go-to-market
Consumer acquisition is driven by free, no-login access, a Chrome extension, press coverage and community channels (Discord, X, Reddit, YouTube, Product Hunt, newsletter). The API is being distributed through an early-access/waitlist program with priority for AI agent and RAG teams, plus self-serve signup via an API console and developer docs. A notable channel is agent-native onboarding: the site publishes install.md, llms.txt and markdown variants of every page so that coding agents can configure the Andi MCP server automatically from a single pasted instruction. Enterprise deals are handled through a sales inquiry form and direct email.
Consumer segments highlighted by the company include researchers, students, privacy-conscious users and developers. On the API side, the target buyers are developers and startups building AI agents, research agents and RAG pipelines, plus enterprises needing high-volume search with custom rate limits and zero data retention.
Geography
Sources give conflicting locations: a third-party database lists the company in Miami, United States, while it is described as a US company with distributed online community channels. No additional offices are described.
History
Development started in 2021; a third-party database records the company in Y Combinator's W22 batch with an initial $125K seed on 2022-01-01 and a $2.5M seed led by Goodwater Capital on 2022-09-01. The company subsequently released a Chrome extension and grew the consumer product past one million users, received PCMag's #1 AI Search Engine designation in 2025 and Top Free AI Search Engine in January 2026, and in February 2026 migrated from andi.co to a rebuilt andiai.com while opening early access to its Search API. Note: sources conflict on founding year (company site says building began in 2021; Seedtable lists 2020) and headquarters (Seedtable lists Miami).
Risks & controversies
Most performance claims β 87% benchmark accuracy, index size, spam filtering volumes and competitor comparisons β originate from the company's own website and blog and are not independently verified in the material available. The company's own materials are internally inconsistent on the number of data points scored per page (450+ vs 1,400+), and third-party data conflicts with company statements on founding year (2020 vs 2021), headquarters (Miami vs San Francisco) and total funding ($2.6M vs $3M). The company is very small (two employees per one database) and competes against far better-capitalized incumbents including Google, OpenAI and Perplexity.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Competitors Β· 7
by search overlap
Companies competing with Andi for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline Β· 3
launches, deals, and filingsAndi announced early access to the Andi Search API, a REST search/fetch API for AI agents and RAG pipelines built on its 25-billion-page Trantora index, compatible with Google Custom Search and OpenSearch. The company also announced its move from andi.co to andiai.com with a rebuilt site (Astro 5, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4, MDX), including markdown content negotiation and llms.txt for AI crawlers. The post states six YC startups were already using the API in production with 45 more on the waitlist.
PCMag rated Andi the Top Free AI Search Engine in January 2026.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Andiandiai.com Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Andi do?
- Andi is an AI search engine built on its own web index, Trantora, offered as a free consumer product and a developer search API.
- Who founded Andi?
- Andi was founded by Angela Hoover, Jed White in 2021.
- Who are Andi's investors?
- Andi's investors include Y Combinator, Gaingels, GV (Google Ventures), NVIDIA, SV Angel.
- Where is Andi headquartered?
- Andi is headquartered in San Francisco, US.