Neeva
AcquiredMountain View, US · Founded 2019 · Delaware corporation · 6 known investors
Acquired by Snowflake May 2023 · $185.4M · source ↗
The world's first ad-free, private search engine
Founders & leadership
Neeva was founded in 2019 by Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan.
Board
Investors · 6
Also in the syndicate · 2
Reported raises · per SEC filings
Form D private placements$40.2M disclosed across 1 of 2 rounds · 2021–2024
▶$40.2MraisedMay 2021 · 34 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Reid HoffmanDirector
- Sridhar RamaswamyExecutive Officer, Director
- Bill CoughranDirector
- Vivek RaghunathanDirector
- Asheem ChandnaDirector
- M. Margaret H. GeorgiadisDirector
- Offering amount
- $40.2M
- Amount sold
- $40.2M
- First sale
- Jan 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2018
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Neeva was founded in 2019 by Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, two veterans of Google's advertising business. Ramaswamy joined Google in 2003 as a mid-level engineer working on AdWords infrastructure and rose over 15 years to become Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce, overseeing an advertising business worth roughly $100 billion annually, before leaving Google in 2018. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from IIT Madras and a PhD in computer science from Brown University. After leaving Google, Ramaswamy spent roughly a year (2018-2019) as a venture partner at Greylock Partners before co-founding Neeva with Raghunathan, a former Google/YouTube monetization and engineering executive. The company was headquartered in Mountain View, California.
Neeva's founding thesis, as widely reported (notably in a June 2020 New York Times profile titled 'A Former Google Executive Takes Aim at His Old Company With a Start-Up'), was that ad-supported search inherently conflicts with users' interests, and that a subscription-funded, ad-free and tracker-free search engine could better serve users while also respecting privacy. Neeva raised a Series A round (reported around $37.5 million) in its early stealth period, with Sequoia Capital and Greylock among the lead backers, alongside Inovia Capital (led by former Google CFO Patrick Pichette, who joined as a board observer). The company launched its consumer product publicly in the U.S. in June 2021 with total funding to date reported at $77.5 million (later rounded up to 'over $77 million' or 'over $80 million' in different press accounts) across what Crunchbase records as two named rounds -- a Series A and a Series B (the Series B co-led by Greylock and Sequoia Capital). No Series C round is confirmed to have closed; press coverage explicitly notes 'no Series C funding materialized after the Series B round.'
Initially, Neeva sourced search results via a mix of its own nascent crawler and third-party data/APIs, including Microsoft Bing, Yelp, The Weather Channel, and Apple Maps, while it built out proprietary ranking, crawling, and machine-learning infrastructure. The product offered a free ad-free tier (added roughly six months after the paid-only launch) and a paid Neeva Premium tier priced around $4.95/month that bundled privacy tools including a password manager and VPN via partnerships with LastPass and Bitdefender. Distinctive features included blocking of ad trackers via a browser extension, personal search across connected accounts (Gmail, Office 365, Dropbox, Slack, GitHub, etc.), and user control over source ranking/deprioritization.
Business model
Subscription (freemium) consumer search engine: a free ad-free tier monetized indirectly by user growth, and a paid Neeva Premium tier (~$4.95/month) bundling privacy tools (password manager, VPN via partnerships with LastPass and Bitdefender). Initially sourced results via Microsoft Bing's API and partner data (Yelp, Weather Channel, Apple Maps) before building proprietary ranking/crawling technology; later added a generative AI answer engine (NeevaAI). In 2023 pivoted away from consumer subscriptions toward enterprise/generative AI search technology shortly before being acquired by Snowflake.
Consumer subscription fees (Neeva Premium, ~$4.95/month); reportedly generated less than $1 million in subscription revenue in total before shutting down consumer search, per co-founder Sridhar Ramaswamy's sworn testimony in the US v. Google antitrust case.
▸Full profile — profile (continued), go-to-market, ownership
Profile (continued)
Neeva expanded internationally in October 2022, launching localized versions in the UK, France, and Germany (with India, Canada, and Australia flagged as future targets), turning off search history collection by default in that release. As the generative-AI wave accelerated in late 2022/early 2023, Neeva pivoted quickly: it launched NeevaAI, a generative, cited-answer AI search experience, in the U.S. in January 2023 and expanded it internationally (Canada, UK, Germany, France, Spain) on February 13, 2023, positioning itself against ChatGPT, Google's then-forthcoming Bard, Microsoft's Bing+ChatGPT integration, and You.com's earlier AI search feature. CEO Ramaswamy argued Neeva's tech emphasized factual reliability and would decline to answer where it lacked confidence, in contrast to hallucination-prone competitors. By this point Neeva had accumulated over 600,000 registered users (reportedly peaking at several million unique monthly users at points), the vast majority on the free tier; per Ramaswamy's later sworn testimony in the U.S. v. Google antitrust trial, subscription revenue totaled less than $1 million over the company's life, and he testified that Neeva could not raise capital fast enough to build a business it believed could eventually compete for even a small (~2.5%) share of general search queries against Google's dominance and default-placement advantages.
On May 20-21, 2023, Neeva's co-founders announced they were shutting down the consumer search product, citing the difficulty of persuading users to switch away from free, deeply entrenched incumbents (rather than difficulty getting users to pay) combined with a harsher fundraising environment for consumer subscription businesses. The company promised refunds for unused Neeva Premium subscription time and committed to deleting user data, with neeva.com slated to go offline within weeks (it ceased operating around June 2, 2023). Simultaneously, Neeva announced it would pivot fully to enterprise applications of its generative AI and search technology.
Days later, on May 24, 2023, Snowflake Inc. announced it had agreed to acquire Neeva, aiming to bring generative-AI-powered, conversational search and data-discovery capabilities into Snowflake's Data Cloud platform. Deal terms were not disclosed by either company at announcement, but a Snowflake SEC filing (referenced via Yahoo Finance/EDGAR and cited by Wikipedia) later put the cash purchase price at approximately $185.4 million; a February 2024 TechCrunch report on unsealed U.S. v. Google antitrust court documents cited the figure as approximately $184.4 million in cash -- more than double what Neeva had raised from investors (Sequoia, Greylock, and a personal investment from Ramaswamy). Neeva's generative AI search app (reported internally as 'Gist') and its underlying small-model/low-latency search technology were folded into Snowflake's enterprise search roadmap. Sridhar Ramaswamy joined Snowflake in a leadership capacity after the deal and was named Snowflake's CEO effective February 28, 2024, succeeding Frank Slootman -- a striking outcome in which the founder of an acquired ad-free search startup ended up running the acquiring public cloud-data company roughly nine months after the deal closed.
Key people beyond the two co-founders included board members Reid Hoffman (Greylock partner) and William Coughran (former Google SVP of Engineering, later a partner at Sequoia Capital) and Margaret Georgiadis (former President of Google Americas and former CEO of Ancestry.com, who joined Neeva's board around 2020), plus board observer Patrick Pichette (former Google CFO, General Partner at Inovia Capital). Greylock partner Asheem Chandna is listed by both Greylock and Crunchbase as a founding investor and board member, reflecting Greylock's Series A/B involvement and its founder's own prior tenure as a Greylock venture partner.
Go-to-market
Privacy-conscious consumers seeking an ad-free, tracker-free alternative to Google Search; later, prospective enterprise customers for AI-powered search/data-discovery technology (a focus explored just before the Snowflake acquisition).
Ownership
subsidiary — parent: Snowflake Inc.
Compiled by commissioned research from 16 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.
Founder mafia
3 people who came through Neeva went on to found or lead other companies.
Timeline · 11
launches, deals, and filingsRamaswamy is named CEO of Snowflake, succeeding Frank Slootman, roughly nine months after Snowflake's acquisition of Neeva.
Neeva.com and the consumer product go offline; user data deleted and Premium subscribers refunded for unused time.
Snowflake announces it has agreed to acquire Neeva to bring generative-AI-powered search to its Data Cloud platform; terms undisclosed at the time (later reported around $184-185 million in cash).
Neeva's co-founders announce they are shutting down the consumer search product, citing the difficulty of converting users from free incumbents, and pivoting to enterprise AI/search technology.
NeevaAI expands to Canada, UK, Germany, France, and Spain amid the broader generative-AI/ChatGPT wave.
Neeva introduces its generative AI-powered answer engine, NeevaAI, in the U.S. market.
Neeva launches localized versions in the UK, France, and Germany, turning off search history by default.
Neeva launches its ad-free subscription search engine publicly in the U.S., disclosing total funding of $77.5 million and a search-results partnership with Yelp.
NYT publishes 'A Former Google Executive Takes Aim at His Old Company With a Start-Up,' introducing Neeva publicly while still in early stealth-adjacent stage (~25 employees).
Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan co-found Neeva in Mountain View, California, to build a subscription-based, ad-free search engine.
After 15 years at Google, most recently as SVP of Ads & Commerce, Ramaswamy departs and becomes a venture partner at Greylock Partners.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structureIn the news
▸Research sources · 16
primary sources listed
- Neeva - Greylock PortfolioGreylock Partners · company site
- SNOW: 10-Q Quarterly reportSEC Filing via Yahoo Finance · filing
16 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Neeva do?
- The world's first ad-free, private search engine
- Who founded Neeva?
- Neeva was founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Vivek Raghunathan in 2019.
- Who are Neeva's investors?
- Neeva's investors include Greylock Partners, Inovia Capital, Neythri Futures Fund, Sequoia Capital.
- How much funding has Neeva raised?
- Neeva has disclosed $40.2M raised across 1 of its 2 known rounds.
- Where is Neeva headquartered?
- Neeva is headquartered in Mountain View, US.