Lucidworks

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Lucidworks Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryEnterprise search
Internet search
Ecommerce
Customer Service
Information technology
Information access
Open source software
Artificial intelligence
Founded2007
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, United States
Area served
Americas
EMEA
APAC
Key people
  • Mike Sinoway
  • (CEO)
  • Reade Frank
  • (President & Chief Financial Officer)
  • Guy Sperry
  • (CTO)
  • Lana Klestoff
  • (Chief Client Officer)
ProductsSearch Engines
Support, Consulting, and Training around Apache Lucene and Apache Solr
Lucidworks Search Platform (AI-powered enterprise search and discovery)
RevenueUS$75 million (August 2025)
Number of employees
250+
Websitewww.lucidworks.com
Lucidworks Platform
Stable release
5.12 / March 28, 2024; 18 months ago (2024-03-28)
Written inJava
TypeSearch and index
Websitewww.lucidworks.com

Lucidworks is a San Francisco, California-based SaaS software company that specializes in enterprise commerce, customer service, and workplace search applications. It is notable for being among the first companies to integrate LLMs and machine learning with search, deploying its first LLM in 2018 and deep learning recommenders as early as 2019.[1][2] They are also noted for publishing an annual State of Generative AI in Global Business benchmark report, which is widely regarded as an authoritative overview of trends in enterprise AI adoption and deployment.

Business model

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Lucidworks operates primarily with a subscription-based business model. They offer an enterprise-grade solution for designing, building, and deploying search and product discovery applications, as well as subscriptions for support, training, and integration services for open source search software. As of 2024, Lucidworks offers its flagship Lucidworks Platform as a quick-start package that includes four core components: Commerce Studio, Analytics Studio, Neural Hybrid Search, and data integration, along with other optional add-ons.

Lucidworks also publishes an annual benchmark report, titled The State of Generative AI in Global Business. These reports are generally regarded as authoritative, based on thousands of surveys with AI practitioners across more than 1,100 companies, combined with data on real-world corporate AI deployments gathered by Lucidworks' in-house agentic AI.[3] Lucidworks' benchmark reports have been noted for documenting the extremely cautious real-world deployment of enterprise AI,[4][5][6] and for noting the likelihood that few companies are currently equipped to fruitfully deploy AI as of 2025[7].

Company history

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Lucidworks was founded in 2007 under the name Lucid Imagination and launched in 2009. The company was later renamed Lucidworks in 2012.[2] The founding technical team consisted of Marc Krellenstein, Grant Ingersoll, Erik Hatcher, and Yonik Seeley,[8] in addition to advisor Doug Cutting.[9]

In September 2014, Lucidworks began its foray into enhanced enterprise search with Lucidworks Fusion, a platform for building search and discovery applications. This platform is built on a core composed of open-source search technology Apache Solr and the Apache Spark computation framework.[10][11] Three years later, in mid-2017, Lucidworks announced its acquisition of Twigkit, a software company specializing in user experiences for search and big data applications. This was later integrated into the Fusion platform as Fusion App Studio.[12] Later that year, in September 2017, Reddit partnered with Lucidworks to build its new search application on this platform. Nick Caldwell, the VP of engineering at Reddit, stated at the time that Lucidworks "had the right combination of technology and the ability to augment his engineering team, while helping search to continually evolve on Reddit."[13] Soon after, in 2018, Lucidworks released Lucidworks Site Search, an embeddable, configurable, out-of-the-box site search solution that could run either on the cloud or on-premises.[14]

During this period Lucidworks was experimenting with integrating LLMs and further machine learning into enterprise search, deploying its prototype semantic vector search as early as 2018, and launching its universal encoder, transformer models, and deep learning recommenders the following year.[2] In September 2024 they released Neural Hybrid Search, a turnkey automated search solution that combines traditional keyword-based search functionality with advanced AI-powered semantic search capabilities to enhance relevance and ranking. By February 2025 they'd followed this with Commerce Studio, an intelligent drag-and-drop merchandising assistant, and Analytics Studio. This was followed in June of that year by a no-code AI agent development studio and pre-built AI agents to support customer experience on product detail pages.

These advancements in enterprise search and user experience have proven advantageous for businesses. An independent study by Forrester Consulting found that Lucidworks users documented a 391% three-year ROI.[15] Gartner subsequently named Lucidworks a "Leader" in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for search and product discovery category. [16] In December 2024, Lucidworks published statistics from its clients during the peak holiday shopping periods, reporting the ability of its platform to handle 301,000 searches per minute.[17]

Funding

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Lucidworks received Series A funding from Basis Technology, Granite Ventures, and Walden International in September 2008, with In-Q-Tel as a strategic investor. In August 2014, Lucidworks closed an $8 million Series C round with Shasta Ventures, Basis Technology, Granite Ventures, and Walden International participating.[18][19] In November 2015, Lucidworks closed a $21 million Series D funding round, with Allegis Capital and existing investors Shasta Ventures and Granite Ventures participating.[20] In May 2018, the firm announced a $50 million Series E led by Top Tier Capital Partners, with participation from Silver Lake's growth capital fund, Silver Lake Waterman.[21] In August 2019, Lucidworks announced $100 million in Series F funding, led by Francisco Partners and TPG Sixth Street Partners, with existing investors Top Tier Capital Partners, Shasta Ventures, Granite Ventures, and Allegis.[22][23]

Awards

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  • Finalist for the 2010 Red Herring 100 North America Award[24]
  • Winner, InfoWorld 2017 Technology of the Year[25]
  • Winner, 2025 Enterprise AI Search Solution of the Year by AI Breakthrough Awards [26]


References

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  1. ^ "Enterprise Search: AI". Enterprise Search. May 3, 2018. Archived from the original on July 15, 2025. Retrieved September 22, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Lee, David; Technology, VP of (March 26, 2025). "Lucidworks: Revolutionary AI-Powered Enterprise Search and Discovery Solutions". Lucidworks. Retrieved September 19, 2025.
  3. ^ Schoenfield, Lila (August 25, 2025). "The State of Generative AI 2025: 3 questions to understand your agentic AI readiness". Lucidworks. Retrieved September 19, 2025.
  4. ^ Hoffman, Constantine von (June 12, 2024). "Apple doubles down on AI despite signs of an industry slowdown". MarTech. Retrieved September 22, 2025.
  5. ^ Kremenetsky, Matt (July 10, 2024). "Lucidworks' Second Study on Generative AI Highlights Manufacturers' Concerns". 3DPrint.com. Retrieved September 19, 2025.
  6. ^ "Manufacturers slow Gen AI rollout on rising accuracy concerns, says study". Reuters. July 10, 2024. Retrieved September 19, 2025.
  7. ^ Poinski, Megan (July 3, 2025). "AI Can Grow Both Your Company And Your Headcount". Forbes. Retrieved September 19, 2025.
  8. ^ "Trouble at LucidWorks: Lawsuits, lost deals, & layoffs plague the search startup despite funding". VentureBeat. September 5, 2014. Archived from the original on September 8, 2014. Retrieved August 26, 2020.
  9. ^ "LucidWorks Launches as First Commercial Company Dedicated to Apache Lucene/Solr Open Source Search Technology". Lucidworks. January 26, 2009. Retrieved September 22, 2025.
  10. ^ Carney, Michael (September 18, 2014). "LucidWorks debuts new Fusion platform, offers modularized, personalized search for the enterprise". Pando. Archived from the original on September 22, 2014.
  11. ^ Woodie, Alex (September 18, 2014). "Under New CEO, Lucidworks Aims to Redefine Search and Itself". BigDATAwire. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  12. ^ "Lucidworks Acquires Twigkit to Deliver Superior Enterprise Search Experience". May 10, 2017.
  13. ^ Miller, Ron (September 7, 2017). "Reddit teams with Lucidworks to build new search framework". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
  14. ^ Miller, Ron. "Lucidworks launches site search as a service tool". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 7, 2018.
  15. ^ "391% Three-Year ROI from Lucidworks' AI Driven Search Platform According to Independent Study". Yahoo Finance. June 29, 2023. Retrieved September 18, 2025.
  16. ^ "Magic Quadrant for Search and Product Discovery". Gartner. January 1, 1970. Retrieved September 18, 2025.
  17. ^ Klestoff, Lana (December 10, 2024). "Cyber 5 2024: The Role of AI Ecommerce Search and Discovery in Driving Record Sales". Lucidworks. Retrieved September 18, 2025.
  18. ^ "SEC Form D". August 31, 2014.
  19. ^ "Reddit Traffic". Retrieved June 13, 2024.
  20. ^ "Lucidworks Announces $21 Million in Series D Funding". November 18, 2015.
  21. ^ "Lucidworks raises $50 million for companies to build smarter search into their applications". May 3, 2018.
  22. ^ "Lucidworks raises $100M to expand in AI-powered search-as-a-service for organizations". August 12, 2019.
  23. ^ "Lucidworks lands $370M valuation for AI-powered search engines". PitchBook. August 12, 2019. Retrieved September 22, 2025.
  24. ^ "Lucid Imagination Is a Finalist for the 2010 Red Herring 100 North America Award". Yahoo! Finance. June 7, 2010. Archived from the original on September 16, 2010.
  25. ^ "InfoWorld's 2017 Technology of the Year Award winners". InfoWorld. January 17, 2017. Archived from the original on February 4, 2017.
  26. ^ "Lucidworks Wins "Enterprise AI Search Solution of the Year" in AI Breakthrough Awards". Smarter News, Analysis & Research Communities. July 8, 2025. Retrieved September 18, 2025.
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