Dexa Raises $6M In Seed Funding and Signs Exclusive Partnership With Huberman Lab

By Riley Tomasek, Founder & CEO

I’ve always been an avid podcast listener, particularly for the useful advice and recommendations that many of my favorite shows offer on topics like health, wellness and personal development. A few years ago, however, I ran into one of the format’s major pain points: its abysmal search functionality.

After listening to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Huberman Lab, I decided to follow host Andrew Huberman’s recommendation on using magnesium to help with sleep. When the magnesium arrived, I realized I couldn’t recall his guidance on dosing. Anyone who has ever listened to an episode of Huberman Lab knows that the shows are absolutely packed with useful information, but they are long – sometimes up to 3.5 hours! I spent hours trying to find the specific part of the show that referenced how much magnesium to take.

The experience was so painful, I did what any engineer would do – I built an app to be able to easily search previous episodes and shared it with my followers on X. To my surprise, it went viral almost immediately. Andrew Huberman himself reposted it the next day and within a week it got half a million views. My DMs also exploded with messages from podcast listeners and hosts asking me for additional features and to release the app more widely.

And that’s how the idea for Dexa was born.

A new kind of search engine

My experience speaks to a larger trend in how people consume content and search for things online. While Google works well for searches based on facts or current events, it is not so great at searches for advice or guidance. In these instances, users want to hear from a trusted, authoritative voice —and that content is often locked inside podcasts and videos that Google doesn’t index.

This is where Dexa comes in. Dexa’s AI-powered search engine was specifically built with multi-modal expert content in mind. We’re able to index, analyze and transcribe every conversation with such precision that we can tell users exactly who was speaking, what they said and when in the episode they said it.

Already, more than 50,000 users are visiting Dexa’s site each month to search for advice and insight on questions like “How do I ask for a raise at work?” or “What is the best programming language to learn in 2024?” or “What are the benefits of intermittent fasting?” Since our initial launch just nine months ago, we’ve answered nearly 1M queries, connecting users with text and clips from podcasters like Seth Godin, Mark Groves and Mikhaila Peterson, without the need to search through endless episodes in a back catalog or reading long transcripts. We make it easy for users to connect with trusted sources, whether that’s shows they already follow or new ones we think they’ll like.

As of today, Dexa users can take advantage of a slew of new features, including:

• A new chat-based interface that allows users to ask follow-up questions
• Search and discover functionality for podcasts, clips, and people
• The ability to watch referenced clips from within the conversation

Our partnership with Huberman Lab

After our initial connection on X around the early version of Dexa, which was initially called Huberman AI, we stayed in touch with the Huberman Lab team before ultimately deciding to work together. It was clear from our conversations that we have a shared passion for making useful content and knowledge accessible for everyone, which is why I am thrilled to share that we have launched an exclusive partnership.

“From the beginning, our mission has been to expand access to zero-cost information about science and science-related tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. Partnering with Dexa furthers that mission by giving people an easy way to find and consume all of the knowledge across our nearly 200 episodes in a new way, as well as to provide our content to new audiences,” said show host, neuroscientist and professor Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.

Listeners of Huberman Lab, which is regularly ranked as the #1 health podcast in the world, will now be able to easily use Dexa at zero-cost, of course, to search the show’s entire back catalog on ai.hubermanlab.com. Queries on topics ranging from maximizing REM sleep to stretching protocols to increase flexibility to the benefits and risks of ketamine for depression will be matched with summaries and clips from relevant episodes.

Announcing Dexa’s seed round

In addition to our partnership with Huberman Lab, I’m also excited to share that we have raised $6M in seed funding. The round was co-led by Abstract Ventures and The General Partnership, with participation from Maple VC,Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, Terrence Rohan and Casey Caruso. Abstract’s focus on technical founders and strong network and The GP’s comprehensive support for builders made them the perfect match for us at this stage in our growth.

“The way that we search for things online hasn’t changed in the last 20 years despite the fact that the kind of content we’re consuming has evolved significantly,” said Ramtin Naimi, Founder & General Partner of Abstract Ventures. “The Dexa team has built a search engine for the modern age that lets users ask questions and get answers directly from the sources they trust. It’s the kind of bold, insightful mission we love supporting and we’re proud to be able to support the team on their journey.”

“Dexa’s ambitions go far beyond replacing ten blue links with two short paragraphs,” said Ben Cmejla at The General Partnership. “They are building a new knowledge graph around people, not web pages — a place where world-leading experts can tailor their counsel to millions and people can find wisdom, not summaries.”

We’ll be using this funding to further invest in product development and build our engineering team.

What’s next

I couldn’t be more excited about the future at Dexa. Everyday I see the need for what we’re building, and hear feedback from users about how we’ve changed the way they find information online. And podcasts are just the start – we’ll be rolling out video search later this year as part of our mission to unlock the knowledge of trusted experts. The stellar group of investors that we’ve attracted is just one more piece of evidence that our mission is resonating with others.

If you are interested in joining our team to help support that mission, check out our careers page. For more information or to try Dexa, visit https://dexa.ai.