Search engine for AI TopK has raised $5.5 million Seed funding to build an AI-native search engine for enterprises.
With the emergence of LLMs, the demand for vector databases has skyrocketed. However, most companies still rely on fragmented infrastructure and legacy tools that aren’t built to handle AI-native search workloads.
TopK has developed a “true hybrid retrieval” approach that combines vector search, keyword matching, and filtering in a unified engine. The purpose-built query engine gives teams deep control over retrieval and ranking, enabling fast and high-quality search in large-scale production environments. This allows teams to fine-tune results for their specific domain and use case, such as e-commerce, finance, healthcare, or law.
TopK was founded in 2024 by Marek Galovič and Jerguš Lejko, who have known each other since high school.
After years of working on large-scale systems and AI tools, they reunited again to reimagine search from the ground up. Their goal was to provide teams with a unified platform for relevant and intelligent search across all their data, without the need to connect multiple databases, APIs, or ranking systems.
According to Marek Galovič, CEO and co-founder of TopK:
“The database market is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The boom in AI-native products is pushing the limits of traditional search systems, which no longer meet current demands.
Our platform addresses this shift in the market and provides a solution for developers and AI agents to unify structured and unstructured retrieval at scale.”
The funding is raised from Earlybird, KAYA, Irregular Expressions, and several angel investors.
“Companies are facing the limitations of current search systems. TopK brings a fundamental shift in how infrastructure is built, along with a deep understanding of the problems that development teams face every day. That’s why we support their vision to create a search system for the AI era,” says Andre Retterath, General Partner at Earlybird.
“TopK has built the core of their database to deliver the fastest and most cost-effective hybrid search solution on the market – all with a small but exceptionally capable team. The investment will allow them to accelerate the development, deliver the enterprise-grade features, and succeed on a global scale,” says Karel Zheng from KAYA.
In the future, TopK plans to expand its platform’s capabilities to include natural language understanding and support for unstructured and multimodal data. This will allow the startup to move beyond a traditional search database and deliver truly intelligent search.
Lead image: TopK. Photo: uncredited.
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