"AI search systems require integration of dozens of components: thousands of models to choose from, which must be integrated to encode, index and retrieve content. Objective Search delivers true multimodal search: the same API for searching text, images and rich composite objects, working together out of the box." - Objective, Inc.

For developers, the past decade has been marked by an explosion of tools and infrastructure aimed at supporting ever-increasing scale and resilience. The cost to that has been equally explosive growth in system complexity and maintenance requirements. Thanks in part to the rise of LLMs, we believe that the next wave of innovation will 10x the capability of an engineer at 1/10th the cost.

We’re already starting to see this play out both in development and in operations. The first wave of LLM applications focus on enabling engineers and non-devs alike to dramatically improve the rate of application development, with tools such as ChatGPT, v0 by Vercel, and Cursor.sh. Simultaneously, infrastructure companies like Modal and DuckDB, fed up with a status quo of complex systems, are creating a future where software stacks can be simplified and applications can be powered at a fraction of the cost and complexity. 

Which brings us to why we are so excited to partner with Pablo Mendes and the incredible team at Objective. They’re combining the power of LLMs with their experience creating some of the most widely used search systems in the world in Siri, YouTube and iOS, to give developers the power of semantic, multimodal search with no additional infrastructure. In their own words: “AI search systems require integration of dozens of components: thousands of models to choose from, which must be integrated to encode, index and retrieve content. Objective Search delivers true multimodal search: the same API for searching text, images and rich composite objects, working together out of the box.” 

With their dead-simple API, Objective is delivering innovation on multiple fronts. They’re obviating brittle legacy keyword search that relies on manual tagging, purpose built machine learning models and complex infrastructure to manage it all, and also bringing the magical ChatGPT experience of natural language understanding to every search bar. Try searching for “an earth tone dress for a rehearsal dinner”, or a stock photo of a “spooky landscape”. 

When we saw the live demos from the team, we instantly knew they had something special here. They are supercharging the most powerful input box on the internet and democratizing capability typically reserved for the biggest tech companies with just a few lines of code.

Today, we are thrilled to announce our partnership and investment with Objective as they come out of stealth, and cannot be more excited to see them power the search bar of the future.