As Google and Microsoft continue to revamp their search engines with generative AI models, smaller players are going in all to challenge them with their AI-first offerings. Case in point: Upend, a Canadian startup that has just emerged from stealth to empower students and professionals with gen AI search driven by some of the best large language models (LLMs) out there. Upend started out as a summer project by Jeevan Arora from the University of Toronto School. After a positive initial response, he evolved it into a full-fledged platform that enterprise teams can sign up for. It works very much like Perplexity, which many believe currently leads the space when it comes to AI search (with 169 million monthly queries). “My goal is to make advanced gen AI models more affordable, thereby democratizing access and ensuring everyone can harness the tools of tomorrow,” the CEO noted in a statement. At the core, Upend offers users a gen AI search bar where they can select any LLM from the options on offer and ask it a question about work or everyday life. The model uses the query and combines it web search or the select source to provide grounded answers, complete with citations to help users go back to the source of the answer. The whole thing works very much like Perplexity, although Upend clearly appears like an early-stage product. Perplexity, on its part, offers more comprehensive capabilities including AI image search and data retention controls. However, Upend claims to differentiate itself with a bigger stock of models to choose from. Unlike Perplexity, which has about five mainstream LLMs to choose from, Upend has a package of 100. This includes all big and small closed and open models, including general-purpose models from OpenAI, Claude and Mistral as well as task-specific ones like Meta’s Code Llama and Deepseek Coder. The new platform also provides an option to base answers on Wikipedia, which is not the case with Perplexity.
Full report : New AI search engine Upend emerges from stealth, powered by 100 LLMs.
