Cite everything
An answer without a source is just an opinion. We hold ourselves to showing the evidence behind every response.
Our story
Built by people tired of searching
Cortex started in 2023 with a frustration anyone in a growing company knows: the answer exists somewhere — in a wiki, a Slack thread, a half-forgotten doc — but finding it takes twenty minutes and three interruptions.
Our founders had spent years building search and machine-learning infrastructure at scale, and watched the first wave of AI assistants confidently make things up. They set out to build the opposite: an assistant that only answers from your real documents, and always shows exactly where each answer came from.
Today Cortex helps thousands of teams turn scattered knowledge into instant, cited answers — so people spend less time hunting and more time doing the work that matters.
Mission & values
Our mission is trustworthy answers
We're building AI search that teams can actually rely on. These values keep us honest while we do it.
Privacy by default
Your knowledge is yours. We never train on customer data and we respect every source permission, every time.
Speed with substance
Fast answers are only useful if they're right. We optimize for accuracy first, then make it feel instant.
Earn the trust
We design for the skeptic in the room. Transparency is how AI earns a permanent place in serious workflows.
Stay curious
The field moves fast. We test relentlessly, ship often, and keep raising the bar on retrieval quality.
Customer obsessed
We sit with the teams who use Cortex daily and build the features that remove real friction from their work.
Where we are today
2023Year founded
6,500+Teams onboard
120M+Questions answered
40+Source connectors
Leadership
Meet the team behind Cortex
Search engineers, ML researchers, and product builders who care deeply about getting the answer right.
Elena Castillo
Co-founder & CEO
Former search infra lead. Obsessed with retrieval quality and trust.
James Mensah
Co-founder & CTO
Built large-scale ranking systems. Leads the Cortex retrieval engine.
Aisha Khan
Head of Product
Translates messy knowledge problems into a calm, simple interface.
Robert Tanaka
Head of Security
Keeps customer data private, compliant, and permission-aware.
How we build
The principles behind the product
Every decision in Cortex traces back to a simple test: does this make the answer more correct, more transparent, or more secure?
Ground every answer
If Cortex can't find a source, it says so instead of guessing.
Show the evidence
Citations aren't an add-on — they're built into every response by design.
Respect the boundary
Permissions and privacy are enforced before a single word is generated.
Join the teams searching smarter
See what Cortex can do with your own knowledge. Free to start, no credit card required.