AI-native web search APIs are now a layer of their own, while AEO/GEO visibility tracking is the most crowded software category in the map
Asked (summary)
Map the web search and SERP data market as of Q3 2026, treating AI-native web search APIs as a layer separate from Google SERP scrapers, starting from 12 named products (Keenable, Exa, Parallel, Tavily, Brave Search API, Perplexity Search API, You.com, Kagi, Firecrawl, TinyFish, Octen, Ceramic) and growing the list via alternatives/vs searches; cover ten layers with offering, provenance, price, HQ, founding, funding and acquirer per company, plus acquisitions, $10M+ rounds and shutdowns since January 2025.
Asked (follow-up)
“Make better visualisation”
The map covers 681 company and product records across 10 market layers, plus 329 deduplicated market events (acquisitions, funding rounds of $10M or more, and shutdowns) from January 2025 through September 2026, backed by 314 independent source hosts. Published pricing exists for 439 of 681 records, and result provenance is stated for 65 of 106 products in the AI-native web search API layer; missing facts show as an em dash, never as zero.
The market, layer by layer
Each outer circle is one of the 10 layers, sized by company count. Click a layer to zoom into its companies; click the background to zoom out. The 12 seed products carry a dark ring and a label. Bubble size inside a layer reflects disclosed total funding; companies with no disclosed funding get one small neutral size. Colour means result provenance only in the AI-native search API layer; other layers keep one muted layer colour.
own indexown crawlBing resultsother upstreamprovenance unknown / not statedother layers (one colour each, muted)
All layers
Exa is the best-funded AI-native search API at $357M total funding, ahead of Parallel Web Systems at $230M. firecrawl.dev
Only 29 of 106 AI-native web search APIs state they run their own index, and 5 more their own crawl; 11 resell another upstream provider and 61 do not state provenance at all. github.com
AEO/GEO visibility tracking is the most crowded software category: 133 products, more than the 101 SEO/AEO suites or the 11 pure Google SERP scraping APIs. stackmatix.com
The largest disclosed round since January 2025 is Perplexity's $500M in May 2025, followed by Exa's $400M in January 2026; 62 acquisitions and 32 shutdowns land in the same window. privsource.com
Where each layer sits in the value chain
Infrastructure on the left feeds collection, search, monitoring, optimization and finally services and media. Counts are the supplied per-layer aggregates.
Company count by layer
Grey bar = records per layer; dark overlay = records with the toggled field present.
Who actually owns the results in the AI-native search API layer
106 products; provenance is stated for 65. Independent index/crawl products are a minority against upstream resellers and unknowns.
Deals and exits, January 2025 – September 2026
Each mark is one deduplicated event. Circle area scales with disclosed amount; undisclosed amounts get the minimum size. Hover for the story; use the buttons to filter.
The full landscape, searchable
All 681 company records. Click a row for details and per-number source links. — means not disclosed in the audited sources.
Company
Layer
Offering
Provenance
Price /1k or plan
HQ
Founded
Funding $M
Latest round / acquirer
Source
Method: 681 company/product records across 10 layers and 333 candidate market-event records (deduplicated here to 329 by company, date, type and summary), compiled as of Q3 2026 from vendor pages, alternatives/vs listicles and funding databases; 314 independent source hosts in the row-level audit. Funding and event amounts are disclosed totals in millions of USD; price per 1,000 queries is shown where published (439/681 records carry any published price). Result provenance is recorded only for the AI-native/general web search API layer (65/106 stated). The SEO/GEO agency layer is source-concentrated: its top URL backs 47 of 146 rows. Fields not found are shown as an em dash; full per-field source links sit in each row’s detail panel.