Startups > Objective

Objective

Objective helps developers build multimodal AI search into their apps via API.

Seed $13M total Founded 2021 San Francisco, California 16 employees

Objective is a low-code API platform that enables developers to build multimodal search applications handling text, images, video, and audio. Unlike traditional keyword-based search, it uses contextual semantic understanding and learns from human feedback to deliver relevant results. The platform makes sophisticated AI-powered search accessible to developers without requiring custom in-house solutions.

Problem solved

Enterprise search has stagnated for a decade using 20+ year old algorithms like BM25, limiting companies' ability to deliver contextually relevant search experiences across diverse data formats.

Target customer

B2B SaaS companies, e-commerce platforms, media outlets, and enterprises needing advanced search capabilities across multiple data types without building custom solutions internally.

Website LinkedIn Crunchbase Twitter / X

Founders

Pablo Mendes

CEO & Co-Founder

Ex-Apple AI/ML engineer who worked on Siri general knowledge queries; co-founded Lattice (acquired by Apple 2017) focused on unstructured enterprise data insights.

Joachim Daiber

Co-Founder

Ex-Apple AI/ML engineer; worked with Pablo at Lattice for a decade building core product for deriving insights from unstructured enterprise data.

Lance Hasson

Co-Founder

Ex-Apple AI/ML engineer who contributed to Siri's AI-search algorithms and infrastructure.

Funding history

Seed/Series A $13M 2023-10-18 Led by Matrix Partners · Two Sigma Ventures, Firsthand Ventures, StartX, angels including Vipul Ved Prakash (Topsy), Mike Cafarella (Lattice), Georg Bauser (Airbnb)

Total raised: $13M

Industries

Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Product Search Search Engine Semantic Search Vertical Search Visual Search

Pricing

Custom pricing based on company size, data volume, and query volume. Not publicly available.

Notable customers

The Information, Brewster Home Fashions, Pod Foods, Dribbble

Integrations

Python SDK, TypeScript SDK, REST API

Tech stack

GSAP (JavaScript frameworks) jQuery (JavaScript libraries) core-js (JavaScript libraries) Open Graph HTTP/3 PostHog (Analytics) Leadfeeder (Analytics) Google Analytics (Analytics) Google Workspace (Email) Unpkg (CDN) cdnjs (CDN) Cloudflare (CDN) Google Tag Manager (Tag managers) Webflow (Page builders)

Website

objective.inc/

Competitors

Google Search

Objective focuses on enterprise multimodal search with semantic understanding vs. traditional keyword-based web search.

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is keyword-based search infrastructure; Objective provides AI-native semantic and multimodal search via API.

Algolia

Algolia specializes in fast text search; Objective adds multimodal capabilities (image, video, audio) with semantic understanding.

Why this matters: Objective represents a paradigm shift in enterprise search, moving beyond 20-year-old algorithms to AI-native semantic understanding. Founded by former Apple Siri engineers and recently acquired by Upwork, it signals enterprise recognition that intelligent search is critical to modern product experience.

Best for: SaaS companies, e-commerce platforms, and media outlets that need to deliver contextually relevant multimodal search without building custom in-house AI solutions.

Use cases

E-commerce Visual Search

Brewster Home Fashions lets customers upload color photos to find matching wallpaper and home decor products, achieving 11% checkout improvement and 9% conversion lift. The platform handles image-to-product matching at scale without custom development.

Media Content Discovery

The Information uses Objective to power voice and natural language search across archived articles, enabling readers to search by spoken queries rather than keywords. This improves content discoverability and reader engagement.

Product Catalog Search

Food distribution and specialty platforms like Pod Foods integrate Objective's multimodal search to let customers find products using text, images, or combined queries, improving product findability without maintaining separate search algorithms.

Alternatives

Elasticsearch Choose Elasticsearch if you need open-source, on-premise keyword search infrastructure; choose Objective for managed AI-native multimodal search via API.

Algolia Algolia excels at fast, typo-tolerant text search for e-commerce; Objective adds semantic understanding and multimodal capabilities (images, audio, video).

Milvus Milvus is a vector database requiring custom semantic search implementation; Objective provides end-to-end multimodal search as a managed API service.

FAQ

What does Objective do? +

Objective is an API platform that enables developers to add multimodal AI search to their applications. It handles text, images, video, and audio using semantic understanding and learns from user behavior to improve relevance over time. Unlike traditional keyword search, it understands context and intent.

How much does Objective cost? +

Pricing is custom and based on company size, data volume, and query volume. Contact sales for a quote.

What are alternatives to Objective? +

Elasticsearch for keyword search infrastructure, Algolia for fast text search, and Milvus for vector database solutions. Each has different strengths depending on use case.

Who uses Objective? +

The Information (tech news), Brewster Home Fashions (home decor), Pod Foods (food distribution), and Dribbble (design platform). Target customers are B2B SaaS, e-commerce, and media companies needing advanced search.

How does Objective compare to Elasticsearch? +

Elasticsearch is infrastructure for keyword-based search you manage yourself. Objective is a managed API that provides AI-native semantic and multimodal search without custom development, learning from feedback to improve results.