Algolia

{{Infobox company

| name = Algolia, Inc.

| logo = Algolia logo full blue.svg

| type = Private

| industry = {{unbulleted list|Software | Information Technology | Search Engines}}

| genre = Search and index

| founders = {{unbulleted list|Nicolas Dessaigne| Julien Lemoine}}

| location_city = San Francisco, California

| area_served = Worldwide

| key_people = {{unbulleted list|Bernadette Nixon (CEO)| Xavier Grand (CTO)}}

| services = {{unbulleted list|Real-time search}}

| num_employees = 800+

| homepage = {{URL|https://algolia.com/}}

| location_country = U.S.

}}

Algolia is a French proprietary search-as-a-service platform, with its headquarters in San Francisco and offices in Paris and London. Its main product is a web search platform for individual websites.

Company

Algolia was founded in 2012 by Nicolas Dessaigne and Julien Lemoine, both originally from Paris, France.{{cite web |url=https://www.latribune.fr/technos-medias/innovation-et-start-up/pourquoi-la-france-a-rate-algolia-le-google-francais-des-professionnels-au-succes-fulgurant-830768.html |title=Pourquoi la France a raté Algolia, le "Google français des professionnels" au succès fulgurant |date=16 October 2019 |trans-title=Why France missed Algolia, the dazzlingly successful "French Google for professionals" |last=Roland |first=Sylvain |work=La Tribune |language=fr}}{{cite web |url=https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/powering-twitch-and-medium-search-startup-algolia-raises-53-million/ |title=Powering Twitch and Medium, search startup Algolia raises $53 million |date=8 June 2017 |work=VentureBeat |last=Magistretti |first=Bérénice |language=en}} It was originally a company focused on offline search on mobile phones. Later it was selected to be part of Y Combinator's Winter 2014 class.{{Cite web

|title=Algolia Provides 'Spotlight' For The Web With Its Turbocharged Real-Time Search API

|date=21 January 2014

|author=Romain Dillet

|url=https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/21/algolia-provides-spotlight-for-the-web-with-its-turbocharged-realtime-search-api/

|website=techcrunch.com

}}

Starting with two data centres in Europe and the US, Algolia opened a third center in Singapore in March 2014,{{Cite web

|title=Algolia Adds Asian Data Center While Taking Over Search On The Web

|date=21 March 2014

|author=Romain Dillet

|url=https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/14/algolia-adds-asian-data-center-while-taking-over-search-on-the-web/

|website=techcrunch.com

}} and as of 2019, claimed to be present in over 70 data centers across 16 worldwide regions.{{Cite web

|title= Algolia's website

|date=11 September 2016

|url=https://www.algolia.com/infra

|website=algolia.com

}} It serves roughly 18,000+ customers, handling over 1.75+ Trillion searches a year.{{Cite web

|title=How Algolia Uses Wavefront to Keep Its Hosted Search API Instantaneous for 12B+ Queries Monthly

|date=July 22, 2016

|author=Caroline Kunz

|url=https://www.wavefront.com/how-algolia-uses-wavefront-hosted-search-api/

|website=wavefront.com

}} In May 2015, Algolia received $18.3M in a series A investment from a financial group led by Accel Partners,{{Cite web

|title=Algolia Raises $18.3M Series A Investment Led by Accel Partners

|date=11 September 2016

|url=http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/algolia-raises-183m-series-a-investment-led-by-accel-partners-2021539.htm

|website=builtwith.com

}} and in 2017 a $53M series B investment, also led by Accel Partners.{{Cite web|title=Algolia raises $53 million for its search engine API|url=https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/algolia-raises-53-million-for-its-search-engine-api/|access-date=2021-10-24|website=TechCrunch|date=8 June 2017 |language=en-US}} From June 2016 to September 2019, the usage of Algolia by small websites increased from 632 to 5,168 in the "top 1 million websites" and 197 in the "top 10k websites" evaluated by Built With.{{Cite web

|title= Algolia Usage Statistics

|date=11 September 2016

|url=http://trends.builtwith.com/widgets/Algolia

|website=builtwith.com

}}

In January 2021, Algolia acquired Romanian AI and machine learning startup Morph.{{Cite web|last=Sawers|first=Paul|date=26 January 2021|title=Algolia acquires MorphL to turbocharge 'search-as-a-service' platform with AI|url=https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/26/algolia-acquires-morphl-to-turbocharge-search-as-a-service-platform-with-ai/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127013335/https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/26/algolia-acquires-morphl-to-turbocharge-search-as-a-service-platform-with-ai/|archive-date=27 January 2021|access-date=28 January 2021|website=VentureBeat|language=en-US}}

In July 2021, Algolia raised a $150 million Series D funding round and became a unicorn, with a valuation of $2.25 billion.{{cite web |url=https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/28/search-api-startup-algolia-raises-150-million-at-2-25-billion-valuation/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACVpFOCJArFt0PFf1Ltnruggo-XZzAU_-0TPEYb3GOdobFFh0C_N2Rk-MA2RRgH84wGMl8RO6BeEo12L-2ky3i04jXuj8qqqszqf9mYsPHKXqG4GN2LadcsE87x2Axp3abGdfutkzXoughhdbRurdS173mfy1hv7S6MAXE32ntjM|title = Search API startup Algolia raises $150 million at $2.25 billion valuation| date=28 July 2021 }}

Products and technology

The Algolia model provides search as a service, offering web search across a client's website using an externally hosted search engine.{{Cite web

|title= How Algolia Built Their Realtime Search as a Service Product

|date=March 23, 2014

|author= Leanstack

|url=http://thenewstack.io/algolia-takes-app-search-new-places/

|website=thenewstack.io

}}{{Cite web

|title=Interview with the CEO of search powerhouse, Algolia

|date=July 29, 2016

|author= Josiah Motley

|url=http://vator.tv/news/2016-07-29-interview-with-the-ceo-of-search-powerhouse-algolia#UgLVz21sHlX0jxAy.99

|website=vator.tv

}} Although in-site search has long been available from general web search providers such as Google, this is typically done as a subset of general web searching. Algolia's product only indexes their clients' sites. Data for the client site is pushed from the client to Algolia via a RESTful JSON API,{{Cite web

|title=REST API

|url=http://www.algolia.com/doc/rest_api

|website=algolia.com

}} then the search box is added to the client's web pages.{{Cite web

|title=How it works

|url=http://www.algolia.com/how_it_works

|website=algolia.com

}}

=API=

Algolia provides their search service via various APIs.{{Cite web

|title=Github

|date=11 September 2016

|url=https://github.com/algolia

|website=builtwith.com

}} The Rest API provides basic features of search, analysis and monitoring. There are 10 supported languages and platforms for client usage.

= Infrastructure=

Algolia documented one attempt to remove all single points of failure in their architecture and proposed a worldwide infrastructure called Distributed Search Network to reply to a search query from any location closer to the source.{{Cite web

|title= Algolia's Fury Road To A Worldwide API

|date=13 August 2015

|author= Julien Lemoine

|url=https://medium.com/@algolia/algolia-s-fury-road-to-a-worldwide-api-c1536c46f3a5

|website=medium.com

}}

The DSN feature allows setting the locations in Algolia's network where the data should be duplicated.{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=2015-05-21 |title=Under The Hood of Algolia API |url=https://blog.leaseweb.com/2015/05/21/under-the-hood-of-algolia-api/ |access-date=2023-04-29 |website=blog.leaseweb.com |language=en-US}}