Consensus
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine indexing 200M+ peer-reviewed papers for researchers, students, clinicians, and biotech firms, combining hybrid semantic-keyword search with autonomous Deep Search, Medical Mode, and full-text publisher licensing.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM type—
- OfferingSoftware
What Consensus does
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine founded in 2021 by Eric Olson and Christian Salem, originally in Boston and now headquartered in San Francisco. The platform indexes over 200 million peer-reviewed research papers drawn from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and direct publisher partnerships, applying a hybrid retrieval architecture that combines AI-powered semantic embeddings with BM25 keyword search and a multi-step ranking model weighing relevance, recency, citation count, and journal impact. The platform serves approximately 10 million researchers, students, clinicians, and biotech professionals, with representation across 12,500+ universities and formal partnerships with 170+ university libraries.
The product surface extends well beyond keyword search. Deep Search is an autonomous research agent that runs up to 20 targeted queries, reviews 1,000+ papers, and produces cited reports in roughly two minutes. Medical Mode restricts the corpus to ~50,000 clinical guidelines and 8 million articles from the top 1,000 medical journals, targeting clinical evidence workflows. Consensus Meter surfaces yes/no research consensus with quality signals (methodology, recency, journal impact, citations), Threads preserves conversational context across queries, Pro Analysis leverages OpenAI LLMs to draft outlines and synthesize findings, and Ask Paper enables direct Q&A against full-text PDFs. A Consensus API (usage-based) and an MCP Server extend the search layer into third-party AI assistants and enterprise workflows.
Revenue derives from three channels: a freemium subscription stack (3 Deep Searches/month free, 100/month on Premium), institutional and Teams licensing (2 to 200+ users, sitewide university licenses), and API access at $0.10 per call plus platform fees. Go-to-market is multi-motion: product-led growth through the self-serve web/app, enterprise field sales targeting universities, research organizations, and biotech, API-first enterprise integrations, and community-led engagement via Slack and publisher co-marketing. The company has raised approximately $45M across a $3M seed (Draper Associates, 2023), $11.5M Series A (Union Square Ventures, 2024), and a $30M round in 2026 led by GreatPoint Ventures with continued participation from USV, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross.
Consensus firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Consensus
- Legal name
- Consensus
- Website
- https://consensus.app
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine indexing 200M+ peer-reviewed papers for researchers, students, clinicians, and biotech firms, combining hybrid semantic-keyword search with autonomous Deep Search, Medical Mode, and full-text publisher licensing.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Consensus industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI-Powered Academic Research Software
- NAICS
- Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Responsible AI, Security & Privacy Platforms (Safety, Guardrails, PII) (HDAEANAG)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Scholarly Societies & Conference Proceedings Publishing (MPAJABAK), Human Oversight, Review & Content Moderation Tooling (HDAAAMAH)
Keywords
Where Consensus is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices2 records
Markets served
Consensus business model
Business model- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Premium Subscription: Annual and monthly subscription plans offering unlimited access to Deep Search, Pro Analysis, and advanced features. Free tier provides limited searches.
- API Access: Per-call API pricing at $0.10 per call plus platform fee for embedding Consensus search into enterprise applications and internal tools.
- Institutional Licensing: Sitewide licenses for universities and organizations with 200+ users. Teams licenses for groups under 200 users with centralized billing.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free tier with limited access |
| Subscription | Monthly | Premium subscription with full features |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | API access for developers and enterprises |
| Subscription | Annual | Teams licensing (2-200 users) |
| Subscription | Annual | Sitewide institutional license |
Go-to-market motion4 records
Distribution channels5 records
Marketing channels8 records
Consensus product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine that searches and analyzes over 200 million peer-reviewed scientific papers, delivering AI-generated summaries and transparent citations. It offers a freemium web/app experience for individual researchers and students, plus enterprise offerings including sitewide institutional licenses for universities, teams subscriptions for organizations, and a developer API for embedding search into custom workflows.
Product overview
Consensus is an AI workspace for scientific research built around a core search engine that indexes 200M+ peer-reviewed papers from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and direct publisher partnerships (including Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Sage Publishing, ACS, APA, and others). The platform serves researchers, students, and clinicians through web and mobile interfaces, with over 170 university library partnerships. Core functionality includes standard AI-powered search with natural language queries, advanced filters, and AI-generated summaries. Premium tier features extend the platform with Deep Search (autonomous literature review agent), Medical Mode (clinical evidence focus), Consensus Meter (yes/no research consensus analysis), Threads (conversational exploration), Pro Analysis (AI research assistant), and Ask Paper (paper-level Q&A). Enterprise offerings include Consensus Teams for organizations, Consensus API for developer integration, and Consensus MCP Server for AI assistant workflows.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Medical Mode: Focused search mode for clinical evidence, narrowing results to ~50,000 clinical guidelines and 8M articles from top 1,000 medical journals
- Deep Search
- Threads
- Consensus Meter
- Pro Analysis
- Consensus Teams
- Consensus API
Products and services
- Consensus Web Search AI-powered academic search engine that searches 200M+ peer-reviewed papers using hybrid semantic and keyword search to deliver relevant results with AI-generated summaries and citations, for researchers, students, and clinicians.
- Deep Search Autonomous research agent that conducts comprehensive literature reviews across 200M papers in approximately 2 minutes, running multiple targeted searches, reviewing papers in detail, and generating cited reports with interactive AI-generated visuals, for researchers and students.
- Medical Mode Specialized search mode focusing on clinical evidence, narrowing results to approximately 50,000 clinical guidelines and 8 million articles from the top 1,000 medical journals for trusted clinical answers, for clinicians and healthcare professionals.
- Consensus API Developer API enabling embedding of AI-powered academic search into custom workflows, applications, and enterprise tools. Returns top 20 papers with metadata, relevance scores, and advanced filters, for enterprise developers, biotech, and research organizations.
- Consensus MCP Server Model Context Protocol server integration enabling AI assistants and copilots to access Consensus search capabilities within their workflows, for enterprise developers integrating Consensus into AI-powered tools.
- Consensus Premium Premium subscription tier unlocking full platform features including 100 Deep Searches per month, unlimited Consensus Meter usage, Pro Analysis, advanced filters, and access to all premium features, for individual researchers and students.
- Consensus Teams Organizational subscription tier supporting 2-200 members with centralized billing, streamlined account administration, and bulk discounts for collaborative research environments, for research teams and small-to-mid organizations.
- Institutional Sitewide License Sitewide institutional license for entire universities and research organizations, providing unlimited access to all Consensus features for all students, faculty, and staff, for university libraries and research institutions.
- Consensus GPT ChatGPT integration allowing users to access Consensus-powered academic search directly through OpenAI's GPT Store for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, for ChatGPT Plus subscribers seeking academic research capabilities.
Quantifiable outcome
- 6,000% revenue growth since 2024
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Consensus
Customer profileNamed customers3 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Consensus technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration3 records
AI capability5 records
Feature7 records
Consensus partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Six partnerships are on record, tiered major and core.
- Taylor & FrancismajorPartnership to access full-text content of Taylor & Francis paywalled journals spanning humanities, social sciences, and STEM. Early results show 2x increase in click-through rates to T&F content through Consensus.
- Sage PublishingmajorPilot partnership enabling Consensus to index and access full-text of Sage's paywalled journals for more precise search results and higher-fidelity AI previews from authoritative peer-reviewed articles.
- American Chemical Society (ACS)majorPartnership with ACS Publications and ACS Ventures to access full-text content of ACS paywalled journals. Delivers more precise search results and contextually-accurate AI-generated previews from authoritative peer-reviewed literature.
- OpenAIcoreEarly partnership to develop AI-powered scientific web search engine. Leveraging OpenAI's language models to analyze and summarize academic papers while maintaining transparent citations.
- WileymajorOne of 6 major publishers with direct partnership for full-text access to academic journals through Consensus.
- APA (American Psychological Association)majorOne of 6 major publishers with direct partnership for full-text access to psychology and behavioral science journals.
Scale indicators9 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights7 records
Consensus competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- ResearchRabbit: Academic literature discovery and collaboration tool that visualizes paper networks and personalized recommendations. Competes for the same graduate student and researcher workflow that Consensus targets with Threads and Deep Search.
- Perplexity: AI answer engine with cited sources across the open web, including academic content via Pro Search. Also a Consensus investor, signaling overlapping interests in AI search with citation grounding.
- Connected Papers: Graph-based tool for visualizing relationships between academic papers, used by researchers during literature reviews. Similar academic-discovery starting point to Consensus search and Threads.
- SciSpace (Typeset): AI workspace for scientific writing and research that includes paper discovery, summarization, and authoring. Competes end-to-end with Consensus's roadmap toward becoming an AI OS for researchers.
- Iris.ai: AI engine for scientific text analysis and R&D knowledge management used by enterprises and biotechs. Overlaps with Consensus API and enterprise sales motion into research organizations.
- Scite: AI platform that classifies how scientific papers cite each other and provides evidence-based answers grounded in peer-reviewed literature. Overlaps with Consensus Meter and citation-grounded AI summaries for the same researcher audience.
- Elicit: AI research assistant that finds, summarizes, and extracts data from academic papers to automate literature reviews. Directly competes with Consensus on AI-powered academic search for researchers and the same Deep Search / automation workflow.
- Scholarcy: AI article summarizer that turns long papers into structured summaries and references, aimed at researchers and students. Closely mirrors Consensus's AI-summarization and Pro Analysis value proposition.
Broad incumbents
- Google Scholar: The dominant free academic search engine used by virtually every researcher; serves as Consensus's primary comparison reference (e.g., 4.6% precision benchmark) and biggest incumbent to displace.
- Semantic Scholar: AI-powered academic search engine from the Allen Institute, indexing 200M+ papers. Functions both as incumbent competitor and as a data source on which Consensus built its initial corpus.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Consensus social profiles
Digital presenceConsensus financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Consensus leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles9 records
Consensus funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds6 records
Investors13 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Consensus 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 Consensus
What does Consensus do?
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine that searches and analyzes over 200 million peer-reviewed scientific papers, delivering AI-generated summaries and transparent citations. It offers a freemium web/app experience for individual researchers and students, plus enterprise offerings including sitewide institutional licenses for universities, teams subscriptions for organizations, and a developer API for embedding search into custom workflows.
Is Consensus a public or private company?
Consensus is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Consensus founded?
Consensus was founded in 2021. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Consensus based?
Consensus is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does Consensus make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Premium Subscription is the primary driver. The others are API Access and institutional Licensing.
Who are Consensus's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are ResearchRabbit, Perplexity, Connected Papers, SciSpace (Typeset), Iris.ai, Scite, Elicit and Scholarcy. Broad incumbents are Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar.
Does Consensus have an API?
Yes. The Consensus API allows developers to embed AI-powered academic search into custom workflows and applications. Available by application only with baseline pricing at $0.10 per call plus platform fee. Each query returns the top 20 most relevant search results with paper metadata including citation count, publish date, relevance scores, and advanced filters for study designs and countries. Access requires submitting a request form for custom quotes. Developer documentation is at docs.consensus.app/reference/v1_quick_search.
What industry is Consensus in?
Consensus's product category is AI-Powered Academic Research Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEANAG, Responsible AI, Security & Privacy Platforms (Safety, Guardrails, PII), with a secondary code of MPAJABAK, Scholarly Societies & Conference Proceedings Publishing. Its NAICS code is 5192.