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History ​

Kagi was founded by Vladimir Prelovac in May 2018 in Palo Alto, CA (USA). Kagi has been completely bootstrapped by the founder for the first 4 years of operation.

We are not affiliated with the legendary Kagi - the shareware payments platform. That Kagi went bankrupt in an unfortunate turn of events. We liked the name and acquired it when we got the chance.

Early years ​

In the first couple of years (2018 - 2019) Kagi was focused on AI technology, driven by the notion that any future search engine will need to have a strong instant question-answering component. We called it "the last mile of search" and this project gave us the domain knowledge and expertise used in Kagi Search today. Other experiments like video question answering were built during this period.

In 2019 the first prototype of Kagi Search is made public. It used an unusual MUD-like, command-line mode with powerful features built in.

First prototype of Orion browser with support for web extensions on iOS is made, giving us 'wings' to continue building the future best browser on Apple devices.

Timeline ​

2018 (The Age of AI)

  • Work begins on Kagi.ai
  • Team size: ~3

2019 (First products)

  • First prototype of Kagi Search
  • Donna.gg is launched as the first attempt to create a premium search business. It failed but we didn't give up
  • Work begins on Orion Browser
  • Team expands to 5 members

2020-2021 (COVID years)

  • It is all blurred out; we worked a lot. The private beta of Kagi Search and Orion Browser launched
  • Team doubles in size to 10

2022 (Public beta and paid customers)

2023

  • Kagi raises $670K from its users in its first external fundraiser. Total money invested nears $5M at this point.
  • We publish our live stats
  • We cross $1M annual revenue milestone, offering paid web search and paid web browser product
  • The Assistant by Kagi enters public beta
  • Headcount hits 30

2024

  • Kagi becomes a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)
  • The Assistant by Kagi exits beta and becomes generally available
  • Team grows to 40 people
  • Kagi launches Kagi Translate
  • Kagi for Teams becomes available

2025

  • Launched Privacy Pass & Tor Onion Service
  • Team now numbers 45