Exa
Y Combinator 2021 · Active B2B exa.ai
Web search rebuilt for LLMs
Y Combinator's description, shown to identify the company. We rate the name, not the business.
Formerly Exa Search, Metaphor
- Evocativity EVOC : yellow
- Large computing prefix faintly suggests web-scale searching
- Brevity BREV : green
- 3 letters, 2 syllables. Up to seven letters is green, eight at two syllables too; up to ten yellow, eleven or more red.
- Greppability GREP : yellow
- Found inside 375 other dictionary words.
- Googlability GOOG : yellow
- Scientific prefix and acronym forms have prior meaning
- Pronounceability PRON : green
- Regular ex and a sounds
- Spellability SPEL : yellow
- Exa versus Exah-like vowel endings needs confirmation
- Verbability VERB : red
- No natural search-use action
- Nominology
- 57
- All seven dimensions and .com ownership, weighted as set out on Methodology.
- Fluency
- 100
- Brevity and pronounceability only: the subset with published outcome evidence behind it.
- PG grade
- 2 / 4
- Graham's own four-step ladder.
- Exact .com
- Not owned
- Shape
- invented
- Length
- 3 chars, 2 syllables
- Distinctiveness
- suggestive
Watkins SCRATCH flags
- Curse-of-knowledge
Rubric version 2026.10.20-1, judged by gpt-6.1-sol (agent).
This scores the name only. See Methodology.
These judged dimensions came from an AI agent working through the judging queue in a chat, on the same rubric the scoring pipeline sends. The agent passed the calibration exam before its work was accepted, and each batch it judged hid two names with known answers as a check. The model is named as the agent reported it.