Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Quixey Snags $20M for App Search

Quixey, which helps partners provide app search across nearly 20 different mobile, desktop and Web platforms, has raised $20 million in Series B funding.

The company is working to distribute its search mainly through carriers and browsers, but none of those deals are currently disclosed. They do exist, said Quixey CEO Tomer Kagan, who told me that one such deal with a mobile browser is currently generating a million queries per month.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Quixey’s search engine specializes in a few things: It focuses on queries written in plain text, so a user could type “travel internationally on a budget” and find an appropriate app. It accounts for each app’s aggregated popularity across all the different platforms. And it customizes its interface for its various partners’ needs, from search bars to speech-to-text.

Partners don’t pay to incorporate Quixey search, but they agree to give Quixey “full advertising rights” when the company starts running ads, Kagan said. When that happens, revenue will be split with partners.

The new funding round is from Atlantic Bridge Capital, SK Telecom Ventures, TransLink Capital, US Venture Partners, WI Harper Group and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, and it brings the 30-employee Quixey to $24.2 million raised since it was founded three years ago.

App search start-up Chomp was bought by Apple earlier this year, and since then its Android search has been discontinued.

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