apposters.com

Octen Redefines AI Search: A New Era for Autonomous Agents

April 27, 2026, 4:05 am
Square Peg Capital
Square Peg Capital
Location: Australia, New South Wales, Sydney
Employees: 11-50
Founded date: 2012
Octen AI
AIAPIDataInfrastructureSearch
Location: United States
Total raised: $10M
Octen has launched, introducing a transformative web search API tailored for AI agents. This platform solves critical performance gaps found in traditional search engines, which were built for human use. Octen delivers unparalleled speed, achieving sub-100-millisecond latency and processing over one million queries per second. This empowers AI systems to access, process, and act on live web data with unprecedented fluidity and scale. The company successfully secured $10 million in seed funding, led by Square Peg, to further scale its global infrastructure and expand its developer ecosystem. Octen's proprietary Octen-8B model leads global retrieval benchmarks, ensuring high precision. This breakthrough ushers in a new era for AI-native workflows, enabling intelligent automation to thrive on real-time information, fundamentally redefining the search layer for advanced artificial intelligence.

Octen has emerged. It offers a pivotal web search API. This technology targets AI agents directly. Traditional search engines are not built for AI's demands. They are slow for machines. They lack machine-specific data formats. AI requires extreme speed. It demands immense scale. Octen delivers these foundational capabilities. The company secured $10 million in seed funding. This significant investment propels its mission forward. Square Peg led the round. Singapore-based Argor also participated. Octen aims to fundamentally revolutionize AI's interaction with the live internet. This marks a new era.

Current web search engines cater predominantly to human users. They optimize results for browsing. Advertisements often influence ranking. AI agents operate on entirely different principles. They require raw, structured data. They demand rapid, high-volume retrieval. Existing, general-purpose systems fall critically short. High latency becomes a severe bottleneck. Limited query throughput profoundly hinders AI agent performance. While AI models process vast data quickly, human-designed interfaces fundamentally impede this. A completely new search paradigm was not just desired, but essential for advanced AI.

Octen constructed a novel search layer. It is purpose-built exclusively for machine consumption. Its platform provides unparalleled speed. It offers massive concurrency. The advanced system processes over one million queries per second. Latency remains critically minimal. Octen achieved a median response time of just 62 milliseconds. This was measured on the stringent SealQA Hard benchmark. This performance far surpasses its speediest rivals. AI agents can now seamlessly reason over dynamic web data. Their interaction mimics the fluidity and speed of memory itself.

Octen employs a globally distributed search engine. It features a trillion-scale, multi-language index. Crucially, data updates occur continuously. This ensures AI systems access real-time information. AI applications avoid reliance on static, outdated datasets. They operate on the freshest available data. This dynamic capability is vital for navigating complex, ever-changing digital environments. Large-scale, complex AI tasks benefit immensely from this continuous currency. It underpins robust AI decision-making.

Octen's proprietary models lead the field in AI data retrieval. The advanced Octen-8B model consistently excels. It tops global retrieval benchmarks. It demonstrates strong precision in results. Long-context understanding is a core, powerful feature. Another innovative model, Octen-Embedding-8B, also sets new records. It optimizes embedding generation efficiency. This occurred on the challenging RTEB benchmark. These cutting-edge models significantly enhance AI data processing and comprehension.

The Octen API empowers highly complex AI workflows. Agents can efficiently break down vast searches. They can then run multiple component queries side-by-side. This advanced parallelization dramatically boosts overall search speed and efficiency. Google's own AI Mode utilizes a similar method, employing 'query fan-out.' Octen brings this critical efficiency directly to AI agents. Its API applies to diverse data retrieval tasks. A financial institution, for example, could use the service. They could generate rapid, comprehensive stock performance reports based on public data.

Kuan Zou founded Octen. He is a seasoned industry veteran. He previously led large-scale AI search systems. His extensive background spans Alibaba Cloud and Baidu. He meticulously assembled a top-tier team. Elite engineers and researchers joined from industry giants. These include Meta, Google, TikTok, and Alibaba. This collective expertise deeply underpins Octen's ambitious vision. They strategically operate from dual hubs. San Francisco and Singapore host their primary operations.

The pivotal $10 million seed funding round strategically supports Octen's rapid growth. It funds the scaling of its global infrastructure. It accelerates the expansion of its engineering teams. Developer relations also receive significant investment. The capital fuels continued platform development. Octen currently remains in an invite-only beta program. It actively collaborates with design partners. These partners represent the forefront of the generative AI ecosystem. This approach fosters robust, real-world application.

Octen's launch signals a profound industry shift. Core infrastructure must now adapt to AI-native workflows. Extreme speed is paramount. Unprecedented concurrency is essential. Direct, structured data access becomes absolutely critical. Next-generation AI applications fundamentally depend on these capabilities. Octen provides this essential foundation. It empowers AI agents with entirely new levels of intelligence. It defines a fresh standard for intelligent automation. The "agentic internet" is no longer a distant concept. AI systems can now truly reason over the live web, instantly. This marks a new frontier.