Consensus

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.

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

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

• Academic search engine
• AI research assistant
• Scientific literature search
• Literature review automation
• Peer-reviewed research platform

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Premium Subscription: Annual and monthly subscription plans offering unlimited access to Deep Search, Pro Analysis, and advanced features. Free tier provides limited searches.
2. API Access: Per-call API pricing at $0.10 per call plus platform fee for embedding Consensus search into enterprise applications and internal tools.
3. Institutional Licensing: Sitewide licenses for universities and organizations with 200+ users. Teams licenses for groups under 200 users with centralized billing.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion4 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core 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

Named customers3 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

AI capability5 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered major and core.

• Taylor & FrancismajorTechnology or Integration · 1 May 2026Partnership 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 PublishingmajorTechnology or Integration · 1 December 2025Pilot 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)majorTechnology or Integration · 1 November 2025Partnership 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.
• OpenAIcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 April 2023Early partnership to develop AI-powered scientific web search engine. Leveraging OpenAI's language models to analyze and summarize academic papers while maintaining transparent citations.
• WileymajorTechnology or IntegrationOne of 6 major publishers with direct partnership for full-text access to academic journals through Consensus.
• APA (American Psychological Association)majorTechnology or IntegrationOne 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

Direct 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

• Xx.com/ConsensusNLP
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/consensus-nlp
• Instagraminstagram.com/consensusnlp

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles9 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds6 records

Investors13 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Consensus