YOU.COM LAUNCHES SEARCH ENGINE TO BUILD A BETTER INTERNET THAT EMPOWERS PEOPLE TO TAKE BACK CONTROL OF THEIR INFORMATION

*Co-founded by former Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher, the company raised $20 million in funding led by Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures ***to build out its product, technology and team

PALO ALTO, Calif.—November 9, 2021—you.com, the world’s first open search engine platform, launched its public beta today and announced $20 million in funding led by Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures with participation from Breyer Capital, Sound Ventures, Day One Ventures and others. Angel investors include Farzad Nazem (former CTO of Yahoo), Max Mullen (co-founder of Instacart), and many more. you.com was founded by Richard Socher, former Chief Scientist at Salesforce and the fifth most-cited researcher in natural language processing, and Bryan McCann, who led AI teams at Salesforce.

you.com is emerging at a critical moment in the internet’s history. As the entire economy moves online, the internet is becoming more centralized and controlled by a few powerful corporations that treat users as products instead of people. Today, a single gatekeeper controls nearly 90% of the search market, dictating everything you see. The advertising and SEO biases of current search engines result in a lack of control over what people read, watch, research, eat and buy. All of this makes people an object of artificial intelligence algorithms designed to monetize them rather than utilizing technology to harness the world’s information in relevant ways that build trust and confidence with every search.

you.com is the world's first open search engine platform that summarizes the web for users, with extensible apps built-in, superior privacy choices, actionable results and personalization through preferred sources. By combining the power of users’ choices with artificial intelligence and natural language processing, you.com enables people to regain control over their information diet. you.com challenges today’s standards of privacy and raises the bar by offering the choice of a private mode with just one click. The company never sells personal information, nor does it ever track users around the internet. What’s more, you.com has committed to never offering targeted privacy-invading ads.

"you.com is sparking a movement to take back the internet and give people control of their information so they can live more thoughtful digital lives free from manipulation," said Richard Socher, co-founder and CEO of you.com. “The inherent principles of the internet are openness and decentralization. With you.com, we’re fostering a much more open interface that people can contribute to — not just with likes, upvotes, and engagement — but with the co-creation of apps. The values we strive for are trust, facts, and kindness.”

you.com embraces human-centric design, always striving to make the world's information more actionable and useful. Instead of a cluttered list of web links, you.com’s AI organizes search results into useful summaries through an innovative app platform and new search interface. This new interface allows users to swipe left and right to see more similar content and up and down to see different types and sources of content. you.com provides users with more control over their results with explicit customization. Users can easily jump to the type of content they want with a simple swipe.

"We're at a critical inflection point in the internet's history, and we must take steps to restore trust online," said Marc Benioff. “Richard and Bryan have created a next-generation search engine platform optimized for privacy and trust, giving users more control over what they consume and AI superpowers that will transform the search experience. It’s the future of search.”

you.com is a trusted platform that creates value for users and builders to innovate and co-create the search economy. Its end goal is not just to make information accessible but useful and actionable, to give users real agency so they can personalize and own their internet experience.

ABOUT

you.com is a search platform that's designed for this age and with the user at the center of the equation. We combine the power of users' choices with artificial intelligence and natural language processing to enable people to regain control over their information diet — without the manipulation of big ad tech from past eras of the web. The platform is extensible and developers can build apps that run within the results pages. The internet has changed in the last 20 years, so why still use the same search engine from 20 years ago? you.com is the search engine that summarizes today's internet together with our users. you.com was founded by Richard Socher, former Chief Scientist at Salesforce and the fifth most-cited researcher in natural language processing, and Bryan McCann, who led natural language processing teams at Salesforce. The company is backed by Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Jim Breyer, Day One Ventures, and others.