Marqo

Marqo is an open-source, multimodal vector search engine that allows users to store and query unstructured data (text, images, code, etc.) with a single API. Marqo offers out-of-the-box vector search, including generation, storage, and retrieval. Users do not need to use third-party vector generation tools. Marqo allows users to utilize machine learning models from popular providers, including PyTorch, Huggingface, and OpenAI. Embeddings are stored in in-memory HNSW indexes to improve search speeds. The database also integrates with popular AI frameworks, such as Griptape and Langchain, with plans to add further integrations.

Marqo was founded in June 2022 in Melbourne by Jess Clark (CTO) and Tom Hamer (CEO). Clark was previously the lead machine learning scientist at Amazon's robotic unit in Seattle and Hamer was previously a database software engineer for Amazon Web Services in Sydney. The company is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, although it has a parent company registered in the UK. Marqo also has small offices in London and San Francisco. The company plans to expand its London office to include sales, marketing, and customer support staff.

On October 12, 2022, Marqo raised an $840,000 pre-seed investment from the Creator Fund. This was followed by $4.4 million in seed funding on August 16, 2023. The seed round was led by Australian venture capital company Blackbird Ventures with participation from the Creator Fund, January Capital, and Cohere cofounders Ivan Zhang and Aidan Gomez. The announcement of the seed funding accompanied Marqo Cloud becoming generally available.