San Francisco and Berlin-based AI search startup Needle has secured $2.2 million in a Seed funding round led by 468 Capital and Presight Capital. The investment will help expand Needle’s engineering team, strengthen its core technology, and accelerate its go-to-market efforts.
Making Enterprise Data Searchable with AI
Founded in 2024 by Jan Heimes (CEO) and Onur Eken (CTO), Needle provides an AI-powered search and agent development platform that enables businesses to access valuable information locked in fragmented systems, legacy databases, and siloed storage.
Traditional AI solutions struggle with these disconnected data sources, creating inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Needle’s technology unifies enterprise data access, allowing businesses to instantly search across platforms like Gmail, Confluence, Slack, and Dropbox.
Its retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) framework allows companies to build AI agents that retrieve and process contextual data, boosting productivity and enabling automation without deep technical expertise.
Investor Confidence in Needle’s Vision
468 Capital and Presight Capital, both known for their focus on enterprise software and deep tech, led the round. Florian Leibert, General Partner at 468 Capital, emphasized the impact of Needle’s approach:
“Businesses and organizations should not have to hire a team of specialists or spend months working to integrate AI. The team at Needle have found a quick and easy solution for businesses of all sizes to unlock the full potential of their data for AI applications.”
CEO Insights: Unlocking a “Goldmine” of Data
Co-founder and CEO Jan Heimes highlighted the challenges organizations face when leveraging AI:
“Organizations are sitting on goldmines of data current AI systems simply cannot tap into. Our platform provides the foundation for organizations to understand, identify, and quickly leverage their existing data assets and build powerful AI applications with just a few clicks.”
A Growing Community & Market Potential
Despite being just a few months old, Needle has already onboarded thousands of users and is building a developer community around AI agent frameworks like Anthropic’s Claude MCP, Langchain, Langflow, and Haystack.
With the global AI market projected to grow at a 36.6% CAGR through 2030, Needle is positioning itself as a key player in AI-driven enterprise search.
