Neeva, the privacy-focused search firm co-founded by former Google government Sridhar Ramaswamy, introduced Saturday that it’s shutting down its shopper search engine and can give attention to exploring use circumstances for synthetic intelligence.

In a weblog submit on the corporate’s web site, Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, one other Neeva co-founder, wrote that “buying customers has been actually arduous.” They mentioned this problem, along with the “totally different financial surroundings,” have made it clear {that a} enterprise in shopper search shouldn’t be sustainable.

“This was a really powerful choice that took into consideration a number of issues: our enterprise progress thus far, the present funding surroundings and our means to proceed to develop rapidly on this vastly modified search surroundings,” Ramaswamy mentioned in a tweet Saturday.

A consultant for Neeva didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Ramaswamy constructed Neeva in 2019 after leaving his position as senior vice chairman of Google’s advert enterprise a yr earlier, which he mentioned was over disillusionment with the corporate’s relentless give attention to sustaining progress on the expense of customers.

Neeva will discover use circumstances for generative AI and enormous language fashions in search going ahead, in keeping with the submit. Neeva.com and its shopper search product will shut down over the following few weeks.

Neeva customers with a paid subscription to Neeva Premium will obtain a refund for the unused portion, and the corporate can be deleting all person information as a part of the shutdown, Ramaswamy and Raghunathan mentioned within the weblog submit.

The executives mentioned they may have extra to share about the way forward for Neeva within the coming weeks.