Exa (exa.ai)

Exa was founded in San Francisco in 2021 from a deceptively simple premise: that web search, as it has existed for thirty years, was built for humans clicking links — not for AI systems that need to reason over knowledge at scale. Exa is rebuilding search from first principles, using neural retrieval, high-quality content extraction, and a developer-first API to give AI applications the ability to access the live web with precision and depth.  

Backed by Y Combinator (Summer 2021 batch) and with a recent Series B raising $85 Million and valuing the company at approximately $700 million, Exa serves thousands of developers, research teams, and enterprise AI builders globally. Its API powers use cases ranging from real-time research agents and competitive intelligence tools to scientific literature mining and enterprise knowledge retrieval. The company's core thesis is that the quality of an AI system's outputs is bounded by the quality of the information it can access — and that is the problem Exa exists to solve.

Why does a San Francisco based AI startup like Exa choose Greater Zurich?

For a company of Exa's scale, opening an international office is a significant commitment. The decision to choose Greater Zurich was driven by a convergence of factors that are easier to enumerate than to replicate elsewhere.  

“The talent argument was primary. Greater Zurich hosts one of the highest concentrations of machine learning researchers per capita of any city in the world. ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich produce a steady stream of PhD-level talent in computer science, information retrieval, and ML systems.” Max Buckley, Head of Knowledge Research & Zurich Lead, explains. He adds: “And beyond academia, the city is home to established R&D hubs for household names like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia alongside more recent additions to the Zurich ecosystem like Anthropic, Baidu, and Pinterest, meaning the community is not only world-class, but also accustomed to working at the frontier of AI research.” 

Hiring highly qualified AI talents faster than expected

Building an early-stage research team is typically the hardest thing a startup does when expanding internationally. Exa's experience in Zurich has been notably smoother than anticipated. "The caliber of candidates we are seeing is exceptional", Max notes. "We are a small, well-funded startup operating at the frontier of AI search. In Zurich, that story resonates. Researchers here understand the problem; they follow the literature, and they want to work on something that matters. The pitch writes itself."  

Even before formally announcing the office, Exa was positively surprised by a strong pipeline of candidates. Within a day of announcing the office, 70 more had joined the pipeline.  

The region’s international character also simplifies matters. Greater Zurich is accustomed to attracting talent from across Europe and beyond, and Switzerland's permit and residency frameworks for skilled workers, while requiring careful navigation, are well-established and well-supported by the local ecosystem.  

Leveraging Greater Zurich’s research advantage

Ask Max what he is most excited about in Greater Zurich, and the answer comes quickly: depth. "What makes this region exceptional is not just that there are smart people here — there are smart people everywhere. What is distinctive is the culture of rigorous, long-term research. ETH Zurich has a tradition of taking hard problems seriously. That culture permeates the broader ecosystem. When you sit down with a potential hire or a potential collaborator here, the conversation goes deeper, faster."  

For Exa specifically, the alignment with ETH's strengths in information retrieval, natural language processing, and systems research is directly relevant to the company's core technical challenges. Exa's Zurich team is focused on knowledge research, pushing the boundaries of how AI systems find, extract, evaluate, and synthesize information from the web. That agenda maps closely onto the research agenda of some of the most productive ML groups in Europe, several of which are based here.

Exa at Flexoffice

Exa has established its European headquarters in the City of Zurich at Flexoffice, one of the city’s central hubs within its coworking and innovation ecosystem. Together with HeadsQuarter, Westhive, and IWG, Flexoffice is among the four leading providers offering modern spaces for international tech companies in the Greater Zurich Area. One Swisswide membership gives companies like Exa everything they need in an all-inclusive package: access to all locations, unlimited meeting rooms, and personal on-site support.