TopK Funding News – Czech Startup TopK Secures €4.6M In Seed Round

The money will be used to grow the team and develop its enterprise solution for large-scale web search. Investors in the round include Earlybird, KAYA, Irregular Expressions, and several angel investors.

“The database market is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The boom in AI-native products is pushing the limits of traditional search systems which no longer meet current demands. Our platform addresses this shift in the market and provides a solution for developers and AI agents to unify structured and unstructured retrieval at scale,” says Marek Galovič, CEO and co-founder of TopK.

TopK was founded in 2024 by Marek Galovič and Jerguš Lejko, longtime friends who came together to rethink how search works. With experience in building large systems and AI tools, they set out to create a single platform that helps teams search across all their data—without juggling multiple databases, APIs, or ranking systems.

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TopK’s custom-built query engine gives users full control over how data is retrieved and ranked, making it ideal for fast, accurate search at scale.

Their cloud-based platform blends vector search, keyword matching, filtering, and flexible ranking into one system. It’s built to adapt to different industries like e-commerce, finance, healthcare, and legal, giving teams the power to fine-tune results to match their specific needs.

“We are changing the way data is searched and building a platform tailored for development teams that work with large volumes of data and demand high performance, flexibility, and cost efficiency. Our goal is to become the unified query layer that powers search for the world’s most advanced apps. That’s why we welcome design partnerships that challenge us with technically demanding problems and help us push the product even further,” adds Jerguš Lejko, CTO and Co-founder of TopK.

TopK plans to grow its platform by adding natural language understanding and support for unstructured and multi-modal data. This will help the startup go beyond traditional search tools and offer a smarter, more intuitive search experience.

“Companies are facing the limitations of current search systems. TopK brings a fundamental shift in how infrastructure is built, along with a deep understanding of the problems that development teams face every day. That’s why we support their vision to create a search system for the AI era,” says Andre Retterath, General Partner at Earlybird.

As tools like ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) become more popular, the need for vector databases has surged. But according to TopK, many companies still depend on outdated systems that aren’t designed for AI-native search. TopK aims to fix this with a “true hybrid retrieval” approach—bringing together vector search, keyword matching, and filtering in one unified engine.

“TopK has built the core of their database to deliver the fastest and most cost-effective hybrid search solution on the market – all with a small but exceptionally capable team. The investment will allow them to accelerate the development deliver the enterprise-grade features, and succeed on a global scale,” adds Karel Zheng from KAYA.

While TopK is headquartered in San Francisco, most of its development happens in Europe, thanks to the region’s strong technical talent.

The founders say Europe has a deep pool of experts in databases, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure. Developers in the region also have solid experience with key technologies like Rust and Kubernetes.

“We are currently building a team in Prague and looking for more developers and platform engineers who aren’t afraid of complex systems, understand the broader context, and are eager to help build the new generation of search from the ground up. We’re looking not only for domain experts, but also for technical leaders who can take ownership of one of our key verticals and drive its development across the entire platform,” concludes Lejko.

About TopK

TopK is built to deliver accurate, relevant search results, allowing their team to focus on product development. It uses AI to understand queries and adapt rankings, ensuring the results match your specific domain needs.