Octen’s AI‑Focused Search Engine Hits 62 ms Latency After $10M Seed Round

Octen, a new startup focused on AI agent search, launched with $10 million in seed funding. Its search API achieves a median response time of 62 milliseconds, significantly accelerating AI access to web data.

Artificial intelligence agents increasingly need fast, reliable access to current web information to perform tasks effectively. Standard search engines, built primarily for human users, often introduce latency that limits an AI's ability to process data at machine speeds. Octen has developed a search engine specifically engineered to meet the demands of AI agents.

Octen's specialized search API registers a median response time of 62 milliseconds. This speed positions it over four times faster than its quickest competitor, a performance validated through rigorous benchmarks like SealQA Hard. The company's infrastructure is also designed for high throughput, processing over one million queries per second for each customer account. This capacity allows AI agents to break down complex searches into multiple concurrent queries, vastly reducing overall data retrieval time.

Octen secured $10 million in seed funding. This investment round was led by Square Peg and included participation from Singapore-based venture capital firm Argor, along with several prominent AI researchers. The capital will support the rapid expansion of Octen's engineering and developer relations teams, alongside further development of its globally distributed backend infrastructure.

This technological advancement could significantly enhance the real-time reasoning capabilities of AI agents across various industries. Applications range from generating instant financial reports based on public data to enabling more dynamic and comprehensive AI-driven research. By removing the bottleneck of slow web data access, Octen aims to allow AI agents to interact with the live internet as fluidly as they access internal memory.

The company's search API is currently available through an invite-only beta program, with multiple AI software providers testing the service. Watch for broader adoption among these providers as Octen's platform continues to demonstrate its speed and scalability, potentially setting a new standard for AI's interaction with the web.