Needle, an AI-powered search and agent development platform, has successfully raised $2.2 million in seed funding to accelerate its mission of unlocking the full potential of AI for businesses. The round was led by 468 Capital and Presight Capital, both well-known for their investments in enterprise software and deep tech. The funding will be used to enhance Needle’s core technology, expand its engineering team, and drive go-to-market initiatives.
Breaking Down Data Silos with AI-Powered Search & Agent Development
Organizations today face a significant challenge: critical business information is often trapped in fragmented systems, siloed storage solutions, and inaccessible legacy infrastructure. Traditional AI applications struggle to retrieve and make sense of these dispersed datasets, leading to inefficiencies and bottlenecks.
Needle solves this issue by providing a unified search and agent development platform that enables organizations to access and understand valuable data across disparate sources and formats. The platform seamlessly integrates with existing enterprise tools—including Confluence, Slack, Gmail, Dropbox, and GitHub—making it possible for businesses to search, retrieve, and analyze information in real-time through an intuitive interface or API.
Empowering Businesses with Context-Aware AI Agents
Beyond search, Needle offers a powerful framework for building AI agents that understand and utilize organizational data. These context-aware agents help businesses automate workflows, generate insights, and enhance decision-making. With Needle’s platform, companies no longer need specialized expertise to leverage AI—deployment is as simple as a few clicks.
At the heart of Needle’s technology is its agentic retrieval augmented generation (RAG) model, which ensures that AI-generated responses are based on accurate, up-to-date, and contextually relevant information. Implementing RAG technology typically requires extensive resources and expertise, but Needle simplifies the process, allowing organizations to focus on extracting value from their data instead of managing complex AI infrastructures.
Experienced Founders with a Vision for the Future
Needle was co-founded by Jan Heimes (CEO) and Onur Eken (CTO), both of whom bring deep technical and operational expertise from Silicon Valley and European scale-ups.
- Onur Eken has led engineering teams at Everstores and played a key role in scaling Delivery Hero and Celonis.
- Jan Heimes has a background in data engineering, having worked at Climeworks and Notable Labs (YC 2015).
Their shared experience navigating the complexities of data access and AI integration in large-scale enterprises inspired them to create Needle—a solution designed to make AI adoption seamless, secure, and scalable for all businesses.
Investor Confidence in Needle’s Disruptive Potential
Florian Leibert, General Partner at 468 Capital, emphasized the need for businesses to adopt AI without technical hurdles. “Businesses and organizations should not have to hire a team of specialists or spend months integrating AI. Needle provides a fast and effective way for businesses of all sizes to unlock their data’s full potential for AI applications.”
With the global AI market expected to grow at a CAGR of 36.6% from 2024 to 2030, Needle is poised to play a significant role in transforming enterprise AI adoption by addressing critical challenges in data security, accessibility, and compliance.
The Future of AI-Powered Enterprise Intelligence
Despite being only a few months old, Needle has already gained substantial traction, onboarding thousands of users and fostering an active developer community across AI frameworks such as Anthropic’s Claude MCP, Langchain, Langflow, and Haystack.
The platform’s free tier and enterprise-friendly features make it accessible to organizations of all sizes, enabling them to implement AI-driven solutions in customer support, compliance, and internal knowledge management without requiring major upfront investments.
What Sets Needle Apart?
Needle is designed to provide enterprises with secure, scalable AI solutions that address common adoption challenges. Key benefits include:
- Complete Data Privacy & Control – Ensuring that businesses maintain full control over their proprietary information.
- Enterprise-Grade Security – Implementing end-to-end encryption, private deployment options, and access control logs.
- Seamless Integrations – Connecting effortlessly with existing workflows via REST API, SDKs, and custom connectors.
- Scalability & Performance – Offering horizontal scaling, multi-region deployment, and flexible workflow automation.
With its cutting-edge secure AI architecture and bring-your-own-LLM capability, Needle enables businesses to implement AI solutions confidently while meeting compliance and regulatory requirements.
Looking Ahead
Needle’s funding marks a pivotal moment in the AI industry, where businesses are increasingly looking for solutions that bridge the gap between data accessibility and AI-driven insights. By providing secure, powerful, and easy-to-implement AI tools, Needle is positioned to become a leading force in enterprise AI adoption.
For businesses ready to transform their AI capabilities, Needle represents an innovative, secure, and scalable path forward.