Tavily Raises $20M to Power Secure AI Agent Browsing

As enterprises increasingly deploy AI-powered agents to automate internal processes, ensuring secure and compliant internet access has emerged as a critical challenge. Startup Tavily, specializing in this niche, announced today a $20 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners. The one-year-old company has now raised $25 million total to expand its enterprise-focused solutions.

Addressing Enterprise AI Security Needs

Tavily provides web search and data extraction services tailored for corporate AI agents. Industries like finance use these agents for fraud detection by analyzing transaction data in real-time, while sales teams leverage them for prospect research across web and social media platforms.

"Corporate governance, risk, and compliance are now extremely important; if left unchecked, it could turn into a lawless western frontier," said George Mathew, managing director at Insight Partners, in an interview with TechCrunch. He emphasized the dangers of connecting AI agents directly to large language models without proper security measures.

From Open Source to Enterprise Solution

Founded by data scientist Rotem Weiss, Tavily evolved from his 2023 open-source project GPT Researcher, which enabled web data access before ChatGPT incorporated internet connectivity. "It quickly gained popularity and soon received nearly 20,000 GitHub stars," Weiss told TechCrunch.

The company now serves enterprise clients including Groq, Cohere, MongoDB, and Writer with toolkits that allow their AI agents to safely search, crawl, and extract structured information from both public and private sources.

Competitive Landscape and Market Potential

While most AI agents currently operate offline, Weiss envisions Tavily enabling the next billion AI agents to access the internet securely. The company faces competition from:

• Exa ($17M Series A)
• Firecrawl (network search services)
• OpenAI and Perplexity (developer solutions)

The funding will accelerate development of Tavily's enterprise platform as demand grows for compliant AI agent browsing solutions across industries undergoing digital transformation.

Key Points:

• $20M Series A led by Insight Partners brings total funding to $25M
• Solves critical security and compliance challenges for enterprise AI agents
• Evolved from popular open-source project GPT Researcher
• Serves major tech companies including MongoDB and Writer
• Market growing as enterprises scale AI agent deployments