AI search

Peak · emerged February 2023 · high June 2026 · -9% on the month before · 25 mentions on Trending in 14 days

Search that answers with a written summary and citations instead of ten blue links, and the deep research agents that followed. Named by Microsoft: Reinventing search with a new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge (Feb 7, 2023). Also called Answer engines, Generative search, AI Overviews, Deep research, Generative engine optimization.

Index 0 to 100, monthly

Signals

Signal	Value	Reads as
Hacker News stories, last 12 months286 stories, -20% on the 12 months before	286 stories, -20% on the 12 months before	Decline
arXiv papers, last 12 months177 papers, +321% on the 12 months before	177 papers, +321% on the 12 months before	Adoption
Wikipedia views, August 20269,418, +177% on a year before	9,418, +177% on a year before	Adoption
Product releases naming it32 since Sep 1, 2025	32 since Sep 1, 2025	Adoption
GitHub repositories8,880	8,880	Adoption
Funding rounds naming it1, $180M in all	1, $180M in all	Adoption

Trending terms

Term	Last day	Days	PeakPeak score
PerplexityCompany1 day, last Sep 2 3 weeks ago	Sep 23 weeks ago	1	17

Companies

Name	Mentions
Cloudflare	25
Databricks	5
Profound	2
Lovable	1
Snowflake	1

Releases

32 releases since Sep 1, 2025

Name	Date
Connect your app to ParallelLovable · Sep 22, 2026 3 days ago	Sep 22, 20263 days ago
AI Search - AI Search supports extensionless R2 objects with Content-Type metadataCloudflare · Sep 11, 2026 2 weeks ago	Sep 11, 20262 weeks ago
AI Search supports struct and map columns and filter-only queriesDatabricks · Sep 2, 2026 3 weeks ago	Sep 2, 20263 weeks ago
AI Search - AI Search now supports GLM-5.3 FlashCloudflare · Aug 30, 2026 3 weeks ago	Aug 30, 20263 weeks ago
AI Search - New Workers AI text generation models in AI SearchCloudflare · Aug 26, 2026 4 weeks ago	Aug 26, 20264 weeks ago
AI Search - Store larger custom metadata values in AI SearchCloudflare · Aug 25, 2026 4 weeks ago	Aug 25, 20264 weeks ago
ai_prep_search supports plain text and markdown input (Beta)Databricks · Aug 25, 2026 4 weeks ago	Aug 25, 20264 weeks ago
ai_search function (Beta)Databricks · Aug 7, 2026 7 weeks ago	Aug 7, 20267 weeks ago

GitHub projects

8,880 repositories

Name	Created	Stars
khoj-ai/khojYour AI second brain. Self-hostable. Get answers from the web or your docs. Build custom agents, schedule automations, do deep research. Tur · Aug 16, 2021 5 years ago	Aug 16, 20215 years ago	37,493
assafelovic/gpt-researcherAn autonomous agent that conducts deep research on any data using any LLM providers · May 12, 2023 3 years ago	May 12, 20233 years ago	29,610
Alibaba-NLP/DeepResearchTongyi Deep Research, the Leading Open-source Deep Research Agent · Jan 9, 2025 1 year ago	Jan 9, 20251 year ago	19,990
dzhng/deep-researchAn AI-powered research assistant that performs iterative, deep research on any topic by combining search engines, web scraping, and large la · Feb 4, 2025 1 year ago	Feb 4, 20251 year ago	19,723
arc53/DocsGPTPrivate AI platform for agents, assistants and enterprise search. Built-in Agent Builder, Deep research, Document analysis, Multi-model supp · Feb 2, 2023 3 years ago	Feb 2, 20233 years ago	18,283
google-deepmind/deepmind-researchThis repository contains implementations and illustrative code to accompany DeepMind publications · Jan 15, 2019 7 years ago	Jan 15, 20197 years ago	15,204

Funding

1 round

Name	Date	Amount
ProfoundSeries D · Sep 15, 2026 10 days ago	Sep 15, 202610 days ago	$180M

Movement	Stage
RAGRetrieval-augmented generation: a model answers from documents fetched for the question instead of from memory alone.	Plateau
AI browsersWeb browsers with an assistant or agent built in that reads pages and does tasks on them for you.	Plateau
AI agentsModels that plan and act in steps, calling tools and other services until a task is done.	Peak

History

Date	What changed
Sep 24, 2026	Tracking started: emerged February 2023, peak, 5 other names recorded

Sources: Curve: Hacker News story titles, Wikipedia pageviews and arXiv papers by month, refreshed Sep 24, 2026. Related entities from the fru.dev sites' public APIs, matched by name. How stages work.