Sease
Sease is a London-based information retrieval consulting and training firm specializing in open-source search technologies (Apache Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Vespa) and AI integration, serving enterprise clients with search infrastructure design, optimization, and quality evaluation needs.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2016
- HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
- Headcount—
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingServices
What Sease does
Sease Ltd. is a privately held London-based information retrieval consulting and training firm founded in 2016, specializing in open-source search technologies including Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Vespa. The firm serves enterprise organizations that need to design, optimize, and evolve production search infrastructure, with particular emphasis on integrating AI capabilities — large language models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector/neural search, and Learning to Rank — into existing search deployments. Named clients span design/technology (Canva), financial services (Barclays), enterprise software (Alfresco), navigation/technology (TomTom), and media (Shutterstock), with engagement durations of 1.5+ years documented, suggesting deep technical embedding rather than transactional delivery.
The company's core technology assets are open-source evaluation and dataset tools — Rated Ranking Evaluator (RRE), Rated Ranking Evaluator Enterprise (RREE), Dataset Generator (DAGE), Vector Search Doctor, and the Apache Solr Neural Highlighting Plugin — alongside direct contributions to Apache Lucene and Solr (weighted synonyms, multi-valued vectors, LLM module, hybrid search, LTR feature cache). Sease generates revenue through three streams: professional consulting engagements across the five supported search platforms, structured training programs (public live sessions via Zoom, private team sessions online or in-person, and pre-recorded self-paced content priced £75-£400 per module), and enterprise-tier open-source products with custom pricing. Distribution is direct and global, with no channel-partner model, acquired through conference speaking at 20+ international events since 2016, technical content marketing (blog, YouTube, newsletter), and the London Information Retrieval & AI Meetup that Sease organizes, which has grown to over 900 members. The firm is bootstrapped with no disclosed external funding, operates from a London headquarters at International House, Fulham Palace Road, and is led by founder Alessandro Benedetti (Director/R&D Software Engineer, Apache Lucene/Solr Committer and PMC Member) alongside Partner Andrea Gazzarini, supported by a team of approximately 10 specialists covering software engineering, machine learning, data science, NLP, frontend, and digital marketing.
Sease firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Sease
- Legal name
- Sease Ltd.
- Website
- https://sease.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2016
- Operating status
- Operating
- Short description
- Sease is a London-based information retrieval consulting and training firm specializing in open-source search technologies (Apache Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Vespa) and AI integration, serving enterprise clients with search infrastructure design, optimization, and quality evaluation needs.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Sease industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Search Infrastructure Consulting
- NAICS
- Custom Computer Programming Services (541511), Other Computer Related Services (541519)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Enterprise Search, Indexing & Content Discovery (HDAEAGAH)
Keywords
Where Sease is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- London
- HQ country
- United Kingdom
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Sease business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Services
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Consulting Services: Long-term and short-term consulting engagements for Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Vespa implementations. Services include technical design, code development, architecture guidance, and AI integration.
- Training Services: Professional training sessions on search technologies and AI in search. Delivered as public live sessions (Zoom), private team sessions (online or in-person), and pre-recorded content. Training covers all major search platforms and specialized topics like Learning to Rank, RAG, and Search Quality Evaluation.
- Open Source Products: Free open-source tools (RRE, Dataset Generator, Vector Search Doctor) with enterprise support options. RREE provides additional enterprise features with a comprehensive UI.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | GLiNER as alternative to LLMs for query parsing |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Large Language Models In Search Training |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | End-to-End Neural Search Tutorials (Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Vespa) |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Deep Learning for Search - Open Source Approaches |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Learning to Rank Full Training (Apache Solr or Elasticsearch version) |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Learning to Rank mini trainings (training set building, model training, platform integration) |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Search Quality Evaluation - Product Manager |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels5 records
Marketing channels7 records
Sease product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Sease provides expert consulting, professional training, and open source tools for organizations implementing search infrastructure based on Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Vespa. Their services cover search relevance optimization, AI/ML integration (including LLMs, RAG, vector search, and Learning to Rank), and search quality evaluation for enterprise clients worldwide. Their proprietary open source products (RRE, Dataset Generator, Vector Search Doctor) and an enterprise version (RREE) automate search quality assessment and relevance dataset creation.
Product overview
Sease offers a portfolio of open-source search quality evaluation and AI integration tools. The core products include Dataset Generator (for automated relevance dataset creation using LLMs), Vector Search Doctor (for evaluating vector search performance), and Rated Ranking Evaluator/RRE Enterprise (for search quality evaluation). These tools support Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Vespa search engines. The company also provides consulting services across all major open-source search platforms and comprehensive training programs covering AI in search, Learning to Rank, search relevance, and search quality evaluation.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Dataset Generator (DAGE) An open-source command-line tool that automates building relevance datasets for search evaluation by combining search engines with Large Language Models. It retrieves documents, generates realistic queries, assigns relevance judgments using LLMs, and exports evaluation datasets ready for tools like RRE, Quepid, and MTEB.
- Vector Search Doctor An open-source framework for evaluating vector search on custom datasets. It includes an Embedding Model Evaluator for testing embedding models with exact search and an Approximate Search Evaluator for measuring retrieval quality preserved by production ANN configurations. Supports Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Vespa.
- Rated Ranking Evaluator (RRE) An open-source search quality evaluation framework that helps engineers measure, compare, and improve search relevance over time. Evaluates search configurations against rated datasets using standard IR metrics with human-readable reports. Supports Apache Solr and Elasticsearch.
- Rated Ranking Evaluator Enterprise (RREE) An enterprise version of RRE providing a comprehensive UI that guides users from collecting feedback and judgments to evaluating search system quality. Built on top of the open-source RRE library with simplified user experience.
- Apache Solr Neural Highlighting Plugin A neural highlighting plugin that uses a language model at runtime to build snippets for each document based on semantic matching of the information requested, rather than lexical keyword matching.
- Apache Lucene Consulting Expert consulting services for Apache Lucene-based search systems, including technical design, development, AI integration, migration, and search relevancy tuning.
- Apache Solr Consulting Expert consulting services for Apache Solr-based search systems, including neural search, vector search, Learning to Rank integration, RAG implementation, and performance optimization.
- Elasticsearch Consulting Expert consulting services for Elasticsearch-based search systems, including AI integration, vector search, NLP techniques, and search relevancy tuning.
- OpenSearch Consulting Expert consulting services for OpenSearch-based search systems, including AI integration, vector search, and search relevancy tuning.
- Vespa Consulting Expert consulting services for Vespa-based search systems, including AI integration, vector search, and search relevancy tuning.
- Artificial Intelligence in Search Training Training series covering AI techniques for search including RAG, LLMs, neural search, NLP, deep learning, and vector-based search across multiple platforms.
- Learning to Rank Training Training on solving ranking problems by integrating machine learning systems with search engines, covering training set building, model training, and online/offline testing.
- Search Relevance Training Training on developing and configuring open source search engines for optimal search relevance, ensuring results align with user information requirements.
- Search Quality Evaluation Training Training on online/offline search quality evaluation techniques and integration of evaluation technologies with existing ecosystems.
Quantifiable outcome
- Smooth major version upgrade of Solr with improved stability and reduced latency spikes
- +1 more outcomes
Companies that use Sease
Customer profileNamed customers5 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Sease technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration16 records
AI capability10 records
Feature5 records
Sease partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators3 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Sease competitors and assessment
Company assessmentEmerging players
- Glean: Enterprise AI search platform focused on workplace knowledge retrieval using RAG and vector search. Represents the emerging AI-native search category where Sease's RAG/vector-search expertise is also increasingly relevant.
- Hebbia: AI search and document analysis platform targeting enterprise knowledge work. Focuses on the same enterprise AI-search opportunity where Sease's vector/RAG consulting expertise can be applied.
Broad incumbents
- Sinequa: Enterprise search and insight engine vendor with vector and LLM capabilities. Competes for enterprise AI-search consulting mandates where relevance tuning and entity extraction are core deliverables.
- Elastic: The commercial sponsor of Elasticsearch and a major player in enterprise search. Provides professional services and training that compete directly with Sease's Elasticsearch consulting and certified training offerings.
- OpenSearch (AWS): AWS-managed open-source search fork with its own consulting partner ecosystem. Competes for the same OpenSearch consulting and training engagements that Sease delivers, with vastly greater distribution and seller incentives.
- Coveo: Enterprise search and relevance platform with AI/vector capabilities and professional services. Targets the same enterprise buyers who need AI-powered search, with overlapping relevance/vector/RAG work.
- Lucidworks: Enterprise search platform with a consulting and services arm, built around Solr and machine-learning relevance. A larger incumbent offering end-to-end search solutions that overlap with Sease's consulting and relevance-tuning practice.
Direct peers
- Sematext: Provides Elasticsearch and OpenSearch consulting, managed services, and monitoring. Shares Sease's focus on open-source search infrastructure support for enterprise clients, with overlap in performance tuning and platform-specific consulting engagements.
- SearchStax: Offers managed Solr and Elasticsearch infrastructure plus Site Search solutions. Already a Sease partner; competes in the same buyer journey for organizations needing managed open-source search and complementary consulting expertise.
- OpenSource Connections: US-based search consulting firm specializing in Apache Solr and Elasticsearch implementations, relevance tuning, and Learning to Rank. Operates the same consulting + open-source tools model as Sease, serving enterprise clients with similar open-source search stacks.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Sease social profiles
Digital presenceSease financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Sease leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles10 records
Sease funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Sease 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 Sease
What does Sease do?
Sease provides expert consulting, professional training, and open source tools for organizations implementing search infrastructure based on Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Vespa. Their services cover search relevance optimization, AI/ML integration (including LLMs, RAG, vector search, and Learning to Rank), and search quality evaluation for enterprise clients worldwide. Their proprietary open source products (RRE, Dataset Generator, Vector Search Doctor) and an enterprise version (RREE) automate search quality assessment and relevance dataset creation.
Is Sease a public or private company?
Sease is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Sease founded?
Sease was founded in 2016.
Where is Sease based?
Sease is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, in the Europe region.
How does Sease make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Consulting Services are the primary driver. The others are training Services and open Source Products.
Who are Sease's main competitors?
Emerging players on record are Glean and Hebbia. Broad incumbents are Sinequa, Elastic, OpenSearch (AWS), Coveo and Lucidworks. Direct peers are Sematext, SearchStax and OpenSource Connections.
Does Sease have an API?
No public API is recorded for Sease.
What industry is Sease in?
Sease's product category is Search Infrastructure Consulting. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEAGAH, Enterprise Search, Indexing & Content Discovery. Its NAICS code is 541511 and its SIC code is 7371.