Keenious
Founded 2018 · 12 employees on LinkedIn · 1 known investors
Keenious is an AI-guided platform that helps students and researchers find relevant academic papers and understand complex academic literature across disciplines. Developed in partnership with universities, it serves the higher-education and research market.
Also known as Keenious
Founders & leadership
Keenious was founded in 2018 by Frode Opdahl and Anders Rapp.
Investors · 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Keenious operates a web-based research companion that lets users find published academic research, interpret it, and see how a field fits together. The product combines chat and search interfaces: users can ask questions in natural language, upload PDFs, and highlight passages in papers to request explanations of methodologies, statistical concepts and domain terminology. The stated design principle is to surface real papers and support comprehension rather than to generate written content, with a transparent view of which papers were retrieved and how the search was performed.
The service is positioned around three user groups — students working on research assignments, researchers conducting literature reviews across languages and disciplines, and librarians seeking to make subscribed resources more discoverable. Keenious integrates with Microsoft Word and Google Docs so that relevant research can be surfaced alongside a document in progress, and supports link resolvers such as EBSCO and PRIMO to connect institutional subscriptions to search results.
Content coverage is drawn from OpenAlex, comprising more than 250 million academic works updated monthly, with open access availability identified through Unpaywall. Users can interact in nearly 100 languages and retrieve research originating from more than 100 countries, with results shown in their original language. Privacy handling includes a 20MB limit on PDF uploads and automatic deletion of uploaded files and conversations after one day.
Business model
Software-as-a-service sold both to individuals and to institutions. A free tier offers limited messages and conversations, while a Plus tier removes practical usage limits; universities and organisations can purchase institutional licenses covering their students and faculty, with a separate sales contact route for companies.
Freemium subscriptions with a paid Plus tier, plus institutional licensing agreements with universities and organisations.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market
Market position
Serves the higher-education and academic library market as a discovery and comprehension layer over open bibliographic data and institutional subscriptions.
Positions itself against general-purpose generative AI tools by returning real, published academic papers and explaining them rather than generating content, with transparency about which papers were found and how, and an explicit emphasis on building users' own comprehension and academic integrity.
Technology
AI-powered chat and search over an academic corpus sourced from OpenAlex (250+ million works, refreshed monthly), with Unpaywall integration for open access identification and link resolver support for EBSCO, PRIMO and other library platforms. Features include PDF upload and question-answering on highlighted text, multilingual interaction in nearly 100 languages, and add-ins for Microsoft Word and Google Docs. Uploaded files and conversations are deleted after one day.
Go-to-market
Self-service free sign-up with a paid Plus upgrade, alongside institutional sales to universities and libraries, supported by integration into existing library discovery infrastructure and into Microsoft Word and Google Docs workflows. The site references university customers worldwide.
Students, academic researchers and university librarians, purchased individually or through institutional licenses held by universities and other organisations; a sales channel also targets companies.
Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — 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 — not independently audited.
Competitors · 2
by search overlapCompanies competing with Keenious for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
In the news
▸Research sources · 1
primary sources listed
- Keeniouskeenious.com · web
1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Keenious do?
- Keenious is an AI research companion that helps students and researchers find and understand academic literature.
- Who founded Keenious?
- Keenious was founded by Frode Opdahl, Anders Rapp in 2018.
- Who are Keenious's investors?
- Keenious's investors include Spintop Ventures.