deepset
deepset builds the open-source Haystack LLM framework and the Haystack Enterprise Platform for production RAG, AI agents, and document processing, serving regulated enterprises across aerospace, financial services, media, and the public sector.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2018
- HeadquartersBerlin, Germany
- Headcount51–100
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What deepset does
deepset is a Berlin-based AI infrastructure company founded in 2018 that builds the open-source Haystack framework and the commercial Haystack Enterprise Platform for production-grade LLM applications. The company's core product is an orchestration layer for retrieval-augmented generation, AI agents, intelligent document processing, enterprise search, and Text-to-SQL workflows, with native MCP integration and multimodal support across 100+ model and data integrations. deepset also publishes proprietary assets including the deepset-mxbai-embed-de-large-v1 embedding model, reflecting in-house ML engineering beyond pure framework integration.
The commercial business is structured around a tiered SaaS offering that includes a free deepset Studio tier, a paid Haystack Enterprise Platform with a Starter support tier and full-featured license, plus Expert AI Services for professional engagements. Go-to-market is enterprise-led and quote-based, with named customers spanning aerospace and defense (Airbus), media (The Economist), financial services (OakNorth Bank, Barmenia), and public sector (European Commission, German Ministry of Research). Distribution is amplified through strategic alliances with AWS, HPE, NVIDIA, PwC, Mozilla, and Celonis, and the company maintains SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and CSA Star Level 1 certifications to address regulated workloads.
deepset has raised approximately $45.2M across seed, Series A, and growth rounds, with Google Ventures and Balderton Capital as lead investors. The company operates with 51-100 employees across Berlin and a New York office, and is led by co-founders Milos Rusic (CEO), Malte Pietsch (Managing Director), and Timo Möller. Recognition includes the 2024 Gartner Cool Vendor designation in AI Engineering and the 2025 Sifted Rising 100 B2B SaaS list.
deepset firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- deepset
- Legal name
- deepset GmbH
- Website
- https://deepset.ai
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2018
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 51–100 employees
- Short description
- deepset builds the open-source Haystack LLM framework and the Haystack Enterprise Platform for production RAG, AI agents, and document processing, serving regulated enterprises across aerospace, financial services, media, and the public sector.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
deepset industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Enterprise AI Orchestration Platform
- NAICS
- Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Vector Databases & Knowledge Grounding (HDAAACAE)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Enterprise AI Data & Knowledge Platforms (Vector Databases, Knowledge Graphs) (HDAEANAH), End-to-End MLOps & ML Platform Suites (HDAAABAA), Model Serving, Inference & Deployment Platforms (APIs, Edge/On-Prem) (HDAEANAC), AI/ML Solution Integration & MLOps Enablement (BPAEAAAJ)
Keywords
Where deepset is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Berlin
- HQ country
- Germany
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices2 records
Markets served
deepset business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Enterprise Platform Subscription: Annual subscription licensing for the deepset Enterprise Platform providing production-grade RAG, AI Agents, and related capabilities. Tiered pricing based on usage and features with annual billing cadence.
- Professional Services: Implementation and consulting services for enterprise customers deploying deepset technology, including onboarding, customization, and integration support.
- Open Source Community (Indirect): Free open-source Haystack framework drives community adoption and indirect monetization through community growth, talent acquisition, and eventual platform conversion.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise Platform - Custom Pricing |
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Free Trial |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels6 records
deepset product offering
Product offeringCore offering
deepset offers the open-source Haystack AI framework for building production-grade RAG applications, AI agents, intelligent document processing, enterprise search, and Text-to-SQL pipelines, combined with the commercial Haystack Enterprise Platform (available in cloud and on-premise) and supporting tiers such as Haystack Enterprise Starter. The company also provides deepset Studio, a free visual pipeline builder, and Expert AI Services for consulting and implementation support.
Product overview
deepset offers a platform-plus-modules architecture anchored by the open-source Haystack AI framework. The product portfolio includes Haystack (open-source framework), Haystack Enterprise Platform (commercial platform), Haystack Enterprise Starter (support tier), and Haystack Enterprise Platform Trial (free evaluation). The company also provides deepset Studio (free visual pipeline builder) and Expert AI Services (professional consulting). deepset positions itself as the 'Sovereign AI Platform' enabling organizations to build, run, and govern AI agents with full control across cloud, VPC, on-premise, or air-gapped environments. The platform supports AI Agents, RAG, Intelligent Document Processing, Enterprise Search, and Text-to-SQL as core technical solutions.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Haystack: Open-source AI framework for building production-ready AI agents, RAG applications, and multimodal search systems.
- Haystack Enterprise Starter
- Haystack Enterprise Platform
- deepset Studio
Products and services
- Haystack (Open Source) Open-source AI framework providing production-ready building blocks to compose modular AI pipelines including RAG, agents, intelligent document processing, search, and multimodal pipelines, with full freedom across models and components.
- Haystack Enterprise Platform Commercial platform built on the Haystack framework for accelerating and scaling AI adoption, providing tooling, templates, and infrastructure for data indexing, visual pipeline building, stakeholder testing, governance, and deployment in cloud or on-premise environments.
- Haystack Enterprise Starter Enterprise support tier for the Haystack open-source framework providing exclusive access to consulting and support, expert pipeline templates, deployment guidance, and optional services.
- Haystack Enterprise Platform Trial Free trial version of the Haystack Enterprise Platform allowing organizations to evaluate the platform's capabilities before purchasing.
- deepset Studio Free visual AI pipeline builder designed to facilitate creation and testing of AI systems and applications; does not include on-premises deployment support, multi-user simultaneous editing, or implementation services.
- Expert AI Services AI consulting and implementation services in which deepset experts work alongside customer teams for strategy, architecture, delivery, rollout, and enablement to build capability rather than dependency.
- deepset Itinerary Agent Free Haystack-powered agent chat that assists users in planning trips by coordinating and visualizing travel information through integrated third-party agents; requires online deepset account creation.
Quantifiable outcome
- Gartner Cool Vendor recognition validates market position and product differentiation
Companies that use deepset
Customer profileNamed customers6 records
Segments8 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
deepset technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration120 records
AI capability13 records
Feature6 records
deepset partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Five partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)coreHPE partnership through the Unleash AI Program enables joint go-to-market activities for enterprise AI deployments, combining deepset's RAG and AI Agent platform with HPE's enterprise infrastructure and customer relationships.
- CeloniscoreSovereign AI platform partnership enables Celonis customers to deploy AI capabilities with data residency controls, addressing enterprise compliance and security requirements for process intelligence.
- AWS (Amazon Web Services)coreStrategic collaboration agreement provides deepset platform availability on AWS, enabling joint customers to deploy production AI workloads on AWS infrastructure with optimized performance and support.
- PwCcorePartnership to accelerate Gen AI adoption combines deepset's technology platform with PwC's consulting and implementation expertise to deliver enterprise AI transformation programs.
- NVIDIAcoreNVIDIA AI Enterprise partnership ensures optimized performance of deepset's AI platform on NVIDIA GPU infrastructure, providing enterprise customers with high-performance AI deployment options.
Scale indicators4 records
Recent moves7 records
Expansion highlights6 records
deepset competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- LangChain: LangChain is the most prominent open-source LLM orchestration framework (LangChain + LangGraph), offering RAG, agents, and production tooling. It directly competes with Haystack for developer mindshare in the AI orchestration category.
- LlamaIndex: LlamaIndex is an open-source framework focused on RAG and data framework capabilities for LLM applications. It competes head-to-head with Haystack in agentic and RAG use cases for production AI deployments.
- Vectara: Vectara is an enterprise-focused GenAI platform providing RAG-as-a-service with hallucination detection. It targets similar enterprise customers seeking production-grade RAG infrastructure.
- Cohere: Cohere provides enterprise LLMs and a RAG/agent platform (Cohere North) targeting regulated enterprises. It overlaps with deepset's enterprise positioning around secure, customizable AI deployments.
- Glean: Glean is an enterprise AI search and assistant platform that competes with deepset's Enterprise Search and AI agent capabilities for Fortune 500 knowledge worker productivity use cases.
Emerging players
- Pinecone: Pinecone is a managed vector database that is an underlying infrastructure layer for RAG applications. While Haystack integrates with Pinecone, both compete for the same enterprise AI workload budgets at different layers of the stack.
- Weaviate: Weaviate is an open-source vector database with integrated RAG capabilities. While Haystack integrates with Weaviate, the company competes in the same enterprise AI retrieval and orchestration use cases.
- DataStax: DataStax provides an AI platform built on Apache Cassandra with vector search and RAG capabilities (Astra DB). It targets similar enterprise customers building production GenAI applications.
Broad incumbents
- Databricks: Databricks offers Mosaic AI and a lakehouse platform with integrated RAG/agent capabilities, serving the same enterprise AI buyers. As a broad incumbent, it competes via bundled data + AI infrastructure.
- IBM watsonx: IBM watsonx is an enterprise AI platform with RAG, agent, and governance capabilities targeting regulated industries. It overlaps with deepset's sovereign AI positioning for government and financial services.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
deepset social profiles
Digital presencedeepset compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance5 records
deepset financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
deepset leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles5 records
deepset funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds3 records
Investors8 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
deepset 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 deepset
What does deepset do?
deepset offers the open-source Haystack AI framework for building production-grade RAG applications, AI agents, intelligent document processing, enterprise search, and Text-to-SQL pipelines, combined with the commercial Haystack Enterprise Platform (available in cloud and on-premise) and supporting tiers such as Haystack Enterprise Starter. The company also provides deepset Studio, a free visual pipeline builder, and Expert AI Services for consulting and implementation support.
Is deepset a public or private company?
deepset is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was deepset founded?
deepset was founded in 2018. It employs 51 to 100 people.
Where is deepset based?
deepset is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, in the Europe region.
How does deepset make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Enterprise Platform Subscription is the primary driver. The others are professional Services and open Source Community (Indirect).
Who are deepset's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vectara, Cohere and Glean. Emerging players are Pinecone, Weaviate and DataStax. Broad incumbents are Databricks and IBM watsonx.
Does deepset have an API?
Yes. Haystack is an open-source AI framework for building production-ready AI Agents, powerful RAG applications, and scalable multimodal search systems. The framework provides reusable components for building custom AI pipelines. Documentation is available at docs.haystack.deepset.ai for the open-source framework and docs.cloud.deepset.ai for the platform. Developer documentation is at docs.haystack.deepset.ai/docs/intro.
What industry is deepset in?
deepset's product category is Enterprise AI Orchestration Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAAACAE, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Vector Databases & Knowledge Grounding, with a secondary code of HDAEANAH, Enterprise AI Data & Knowledge Platforms (Vector Databases, Knowledge Graphs). Its NAICS code is 54151 and its SIC code is 7372.