# Weaviate

**Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/weaviate  
**Vertical:** Data & Analytics  
**Subcategory:** Vector Databases & AI Infrastructure  
**Tier:** Challenger  
**Website:** weaviate.io  
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14

## Summary

Open-source AI-native vector database for semantic search and RAG; founded 2019 in Amsterdam; raised ~$67.6M; 5M+ monthly downloads; integrates natively with OpenAI, Cohere, AWS, and Azure for production-ready AI application development.

## Company Overview

Weaviate is an open-source, AI-native vector database founded in 2019 by Bob van Luijt, Etienne Dilocker, and Micha Verhagen in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The platform stores and searches data using vector embeddings, enabling semantic search, hybrid search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic AI applications. With over 5 million monthly downloads and 14,000+ GitHub stars, Weaviate has become a foundational tool for developers building production-ready AI applications.

The company operates on an open-core model, offering Weaviate Cloud Services (WCS) and Weaviate Hybrid SaaS as commercial products alongside its free open-source database. Weaviate integrates natively with OpenAI, Cohere, Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. Named one of Forbes' Top 50 AI startups and recognized by Gartner as an Emerging Leader in Generative AI Engineering, Weaviate competes with Pinecone, Milvus, and Chroma in the fast-growing vector database market.

In May 2025, Weaviate signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS and was named the 2025 AWS Rising Star Technology Partner. Recent product updates include Weaviate Embeddings, Weaviate Agents, and multimodal support. The company has raised approximately $67.6M across funding rounds led by Index Ventures, Battery Ventures, and NEA.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is Weaviate?
Weaviate is an open-source, AI-native vector database that stores and retrieves data using vector embeddings, enabling semantic search, hybrid search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic AI applications.

### Who founded Weaviate?
Weaviate was founded in 2019 by Bob van Luijt (CEO), Etienne Dilocker (CTO), and Micha Verhagen, headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

### How much funding has Weaviate raised?
Weaviate has raised approximately $67.6 million across multiple funding rounds, with investors including Index Ventures, Battery Ventures, and NEA.

### Is Weaviate free to use?
Weaviate's core database is open-source and free. The company also offers commercial Weaviate Cloud Services (WCS) and Hybrid SaaS for managed hosting and enterprise features.

### What cloud platforms does Weaviate integrate with?
Weaviate integrates natively with AWS (strategic partner), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, OpenAI, Cohere, and Amazon Bedrock.

### What is Weaviate and how is it used in AI applications?
Weaviate is an open-source vector database that stores and retrieves AI-generated embeddings for semantic search, question answering, and RAG pipelines. It uniquely combines vector search with structured data filtering in a graph-based object model.

### How does Weaviate's hybrid search work?
Weaviate supports hybrid search combining dense vector similarity (semantic relevance) with sparse BM25 keyword search, enabling more accurate retrieval than either method alone—particularly valuable for RAG applications requiring both semantic and exact-match retrieval.

### Is Weaviate available as a managed service?
Yes. Weaviate Cloud Services (WCS) is the managed cloud offering available on AWS, GCP, and Azure. The open-source Weaviate is freely available and can be self-hosted via Docker, Kubernetes, or Helm charts.

## Tags

analytics, b2b, saas

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*Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*