Elicit
Elicit is an AI research assistant that uses LLMs to automate literature discovery, evidence extraction, and systematic reviews across 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials for academic, pharmaceutical, biotech, and policy researchers worldwide.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2018
- HeadquartersOakland, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Elicit does
Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant that uses large language models to help academic, pharmaceutical, biotech, policy, and other scientific researchers automate literature discovery, evidence extraction, and systematic review workflows. Founded in 2018 at the Ought research lab by Andreas Stuhlmüller (CEO, MIT PhD in cognitive science, Stanford postdoc) and Jungwon Byun (COO, ex-Head of Growth at Upstart, Yale economics), the company is incorporated as Elicit Research, PBC — a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation headquartered in Oakland, California with a distributed team across North America and Europe.
The platform is built around semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation across 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials, with keyword search support spanning PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov. It is organized into five core modules — Search, Research Reports (customizable up to 80 papers), Systematic Literature Review (PRISMA 2020-compliant and benchmarked at 95–99% accuracy across 994 Cochrane reviews), Library, and Alerts — plus specialized modules for Clinical Trials, Research Agents (multi-step autonomous workflows), and a Mechanisms of Action content experience. Outputs are sentence-level citation-backed for verifiability, and the platform exposes programmatic access via the Elicit API (launched March 2026, tier-gated rate limits).
Revenue comes from a tiered SaaS subscription model (Basic free, Plus, Pro, Teams, Institutional, Enterprise) layered onto product-led self-serve signup, with a parallel enterprise field-sales motion targeting pharma, biotech, medtech, and life sciences organizations in the US and EMEA. The company has raised over $30 million in venture capital across a $9M seed round (September 2023, led by Fifty Years) and a $22M Series A (February 2025, led by Footwork and Spark Capital), with named customers including Formation Bio, Oxford PharmaGenesis, Genentech, Novartis, OpenAI, VDI/VDE, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, and reports "millions of dollars of recurring revenue" roughly eighteen months after launching paid subscriptions.
Elicit firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Elicit
- Legal name
- Elicit Research, PBC
- Website
- https://elicit.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2018
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Elicit is an AI research assistant that uses LLMs to automate literature discovery, evidence extraction, and systematic reviews across 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials for academic, pharmaceutical, biotech, and policy researchers worldwide.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Elicit industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI Research Assistant Software
- NAICS
- Educational Support Services (611710), Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities (54172)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) & Psychometric Analytics Platforms (EDAFADAD)
Keywords
Where Elicit is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Oakland
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices3 records
Markets served
Elicit business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Operations
Revenue model
- Subscription tiers: Tiered SaaS subscription: Elicit Basic (free), Elicit Plus, Elicit Pro, Elicit Teams, Elicit Institutional, and Elicit Enterprise. Plus, Pro, Teams, Institutional, and Enterprise are paid subscriptions; Teams is geared at purchasers with a separate Services Agreement. Enterprise is quote-based via Talk to Sales.
- Enterprise contracts: Large enterprise contracts with pharma, biotech, and life sciences organizations. Enterprise AEs are compensated on quota with OTE of $200K–$360K, suggesting seven-figure deal sizes and multi-year engagements. Land-and-expand motion: pilot programs, then multi-year, multi-team expansion.
- API access: API access is bundled into Pro, Teams, and Enterprise subscriptions — not sold as a standalone product. Usage is gated by rate limits: Pro users get 100 papers per search request and 100 search requests per day; Teams users get 200 papers per search request and 200 search requests per day. Report generation is limited by overall Elicit workflow quota.
- Freemium self-serve: Free tier (Basic) provides unlimited searches for free users (since July 2024), serving as a top-of-funnel conversion engine to Plus, Pro, and Teams paid tiers.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Elicit Basic — free tier with unlimited searches (phased out credits in July 2024) |
| Subscription | Monthly | Elicit Plus — paid individual tier |
| Subscription | Monthly | Elicit Pro — paid individual tier with API access |
| Subscription | Annual | Elicit Teams — paid team subscription with API access |
| Subscription | Multi-year contract | Elicit Institutional and Enterprise — institutional/enterprise plans |
Go-to-market motion4 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels10 records
Elicit product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Elicit is an AI research assistant platform that uses language models to help researchers find, analyze, and synthesize scientific literature. It provides semantic search across 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials, automates PRISMA 2020-compliant systematic literature reviews, generates customizable research reports with sentence-level citations, and exposes paper search and report generation through an API. The platform is sold via Basic, Plus, Pro, Teams, Institutional, and Enterprise subscription tiers to individual researchers, academic teams, and enterprise research organizations.
Product overview
Elicit is a single AI research-assistant platform composed of a core web application (elicit.com) plus several integrated modules and an API. The core platform is sold via Basic, Plus, Pro, Teams, and Enterprise plans and is organized around five top-level modules — Search, Research Reports, Systematic Literature Review, Library, and Alerts — that work together so a researcher can move from semantic literature discovery through to screening, extraction, and ongoing monitoring. On top of this core, Elicit has shipped specialized modules such as Research Agents (multi-step autonomous workflows introduced December 2025), Clinical Trials (search across 545,000 ClinicalTrials.gov studies introduced July 2025), and Mechanisms of Action (a pre-loaded AI Research Agent experience for drug-mechanism research), plus feature additions such as Strict Screening, 80-Paper Reports, and Keyword Search over PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov inside Systematic Reviews. The Elicit API is the programmatic counterpart, exposing paper search and report generation to Teams, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers in preview, with subscription-tier rate limits and API-key authentication.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Elicit AI research assistant platform that uses language models to help researchers find, analyze, and synthesize scientific literature. The platform combines semantic search across 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials, PRISMA 2020-compliant systematic literature review automation, customizable AI-generated research reports (up to 80 papers) with sentence-level citations, persistent Library organization, and relevance-categorized Alerts. Sold via Basic (free), Plus, Pro, Teams, Institutional, and Enterprise subscription tiers to individual researchers, academic teams, and enterprises in pharma, biotech, academia, and government.
- Elicit API Programmatic access to Elicit's paper search across 138 million academic papers and research report generation. Currently in preview, available to Pro, Teams, and Enterprise subscribers who opt in. Authenticated via API keys with subscription-tier rate limits (Pro: 100 papers per search request and 100 requests per day; Teams: 200 papers per search request and 200 requests per day). Use is restricted to internal scientific research workflows within an organization; building external commercial applications or training external ML models is prohibited.
Quantifiable outcome
- Researchers report up to 80% time savings on systematic reviews
- +6 more outcomes
Companies that use Elicit
Customer profileNamed customers11 records
Segments7 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Elicit technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration3 records
AI capability9 records
Feature10 records
Elicit partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators12 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Elicit competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Consensus: Consensus is an AI search engine purpose-built for scientific research, drawing answers from peer-reviewed studies with citation-backed outputs. It is the closest direct competitor to Elicit, targeting the same individual researcher and enterprise life-sciences buyer with a similar freemium-to-paid SaaS model.
- SciSpace (Typeset): SciSpace is an AI research assistant that helps researchers discover, read, and write scientific papers, including literature review and data extraction tooling. It competes head-to-head with Elicit in the academic and pharma end-markets and offers overlapping features such as semantic search and AI-generated summaries.
- Scite.ai: Scite uses AI to classify how scientific papers cite one another (supporting, contrasting, mentioning), providing citation-level evidence. It targets similar academic and enterprise researcher workflows as Elicit's Reports and Systematic Review modules and sells to individual researchers and institutions.
- Iris.ai: Iris.ai offers an AI engine for R&D that combines semantic search, analysis, and automated systematic review across scientific literature. It is a direct peer in the AI-for-research space, with particular strength in industrial R&D and life sciences — overlapping with Elicit's pharma/biotech and industrials segments.
- Covidence: Covidence is a dedicated systematic-review workflow tool used widely in academic and Cochrane-style reviews for screening, data extraction, and PRISMA-compliant workflows. It competes directly with Elicit's Systematic Literature Review module, particularly among academic and policy researchers.
- Rayyan: Rayyan is an AI-assisted systematic review platform used by researchers for screening, collaboration, and deduplication. It is a direct peer in the systematic-review and literature-screening workflow that Elicit is actively expanding into with PRISMA 2020 support.
Broad incumbents
- Semantic Scholar: Semantic Scholar is the Allen Institute's AI-powered academic search engine covering 200M+ papers with highly cited author and paper analytics. As a free, well-funded incumbent with overlapping semantic search functionality, it is a broad competitor to Elicit's core Search module but does not focus on enterprise systematic reviews or pharma workflows.
Emerging players
- ResearchRabbit: ResearchRabbit is an AI-powered literature mapping and discovery tool that visualizes related papers and authors. It overlaps with Elicit's discovery and Library workflows for academic researchers but is a free/discovery-focused tool rather than a full systematic-review platform.
- Scholarcy: Scholarcy is an AI summarization tool that turns long papers into structured summaries and flashcards. It competes with parts of Elicit's Reports and extraction value proposition in the academic and individual-researcher segment but lacks Elicit's depth in enterprise pharma workflows.
- Connected Papers: Connected Papers uses AI to visualize academic papers in a graph of related work, helping researchers explore prior literature. It overlaps with Elicit's literature-discovery use case for academics but is a focused, primarily-paid-individual tool rather than an enterprise systematic-review platform.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Elicit social profiles
Digital presenceElicit compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance2 records
Elicit financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Elicit leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles5 records
Elicit funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors7 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Elicit M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Elicit
What does Elicit do?
Elicit is an AI research assistant platform that uses language models to help researchers find, analyze, and synthesize scientific literature. It provides semantic search across 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials, automates PRISMA 2020-compliant systematic literature reviews, generates customizable research reports with sentence-level citations, and exposes paper search and report generation through an API. The platform is sold via Basic, Plus, Pro, Teams, Institutional, and Enterprise subscription tiers to individual researchers, academic teams, and enterprise research organizations.
Is Elicit a public or private company?
Elicit is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Elicit founded?
Elicit was founded in 2018. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Elicit based?
Elicit is headquartered in Oakland, United States, in the North America region.
How does Elicit make money?
Four revenue lines are on record. Subscription tiers are the primary driver. The others are enterprise contracts, API access and freemium self-serve.
Who are Elicit's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Consensus, SciSpace (Typeset), Scite.ai, Iris.ai, Covidence and Rayyan. Semantic Scholar is listed as a broad incumbent. Emerging players are ResearchRabbit, Scholarcy and Connected Papers.
Does Elicit have an API?
Yes. The Elicit API provides programmatic access to Elicit platform features at scale, including paper search and research report generation. It is currently in preview status. The API is available only to users with an active Teams, Pro, or Enterprise subscription who opt in. Authentication is via API keys issued by Elicit. Rate limits: Pro users 100 papers per search request and 100 search requests per day; Teams users 200 papers per search request and 200 search requests per day; report generation is limited by overall Elicit workflow quota. Rate limits are enforced at the account level using a rolling 24-hour window. The API may not be used to build commercial applications or products for external distribution, to train or improve machine learning models, or to systematically replicate the Elicit paper corpus. Outputs are AI-generated, non-deterministic, and produced by multiple models that may change without notice. Models and behaviors may change without notice; pre-signed download URLs for reports expire after 7 days; cached outputs may be retained up to 30 days. Developer documentation is at docs.elicit.com.
What industry is Elicit in?
Elicit's product category is AI Research Assistant Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is EDAFADAD, Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) & Psychometric Analytics Platforms. Its NAICS code is 611710 and its SIC code is 7372.