Firefox taps Exa to power cited AI search in Smart Window

Mozilla has partnered with Exa to power web retrieval for Firefox's AI features, including Smart Window on desktop and Quick Answers on iOS, with visible citations and a zero-data-retention commitment. Exa, founded by Will Bryk and Jeff Wang, will provide current web information and supporting links for AI-generated responses, marking its first consumer browser deployment. The partnership aims to let Firefox users choose AI models and systems while avoiding the vertically integrated approach of other browser makers.

Will Bryk @WilliamBryk https://x.com/WilliamBryk 's Exa https://exa.ai will power web retrieval for Firefox's AI features, giving the search infrastructure provider a consumer browser deployment alongside its existing business selling search APIs to AI developers. Exa announced the partnership in an X post https://x.com/ExaAILabs/status/2089760184382173552 on August 18th. Mozilla's announcement https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-exa-partnership/ said Exa will supply current web information to Smart Window on desktop and Quick Answers on iOS, with links to original sources displayed alongside AI-generated responses. Bryk studied computer science and physics at Harvard, where he researched human-AI interaction and led the robotics club, according to Exa's company page https://exa.ai/about . He later worked as an early engineer at Cresta, building real-time AI products, before starting Exa in 2021 with former Plaid engineer Jeff Wang, his Harvard roommate. That founding thesis centered on rebuilding search for software rather than treating a traditional results page as the final product. Firefox gives Exa a chance to prove that infrastructure inside a browser used directly by consumers, where retrieval quality, latency and citations become visible product features rather than API benchmarks. Exa moves from agent infrastructure into the browser Firefox's Smart Window https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-smart-window/ is an optional AI workspace that can use context selected by the user, including open tabs and relevant browsing history. With Exa integrated, Smart Window can retrieve current information and show supporting sources without sending the user to a separate search results page. Smart Window can also suggest groups for related tabs, identify duplicates and display visual previews from browsing history. The product remains in beta and is available in English in the US and Canada, Mozilla said. Users can choose which browsing context Smart Window receives, select an AI model and disable the feature through Firefox's AI Controls. Exa will also support Quick Answers https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-features/quick-answers-ios/ , a voice-based feature that began rolling out to US users of Firefox for iOS in English on July 21st. Quick Answers processes speech on the device through Apple's speech recognition system, then sends the transcribed question to generate a short response with supporting links. Mozilla says raw audio, browsing history and personal browser context are not shared with the AI model. Mozilla says the Exa-powered experiences will provide visible citations and operate under a zero-data-retention commitment. Those constraints are central to Firefox's attempt to sell AI features without copying the vertically integrated approach used by browser makers that also control search engines, models and surrounding services. Ajit Varma, who leads Firefox, previously ran WhatsApp monetization and Meta's business messaging platform. Earlier, he co-founded machine-learning startup Adku, which Groupon acquired. Varma said Firefox intends to let users choose the models and systems that fit their preferences rather than bundling AI as an all-or-nothing product. Bryk described Exa as the information layer for an "agentic web," arguing that search for AI should remain outside any single vendor's browser, model and services stack. The Firefox deal advances that position while placing Exa inside a product where ordinary users, rather than developers integrating an API, will judge the results. Mozilla buys speed while Exa buys distribution The partnership addresses a problem Mozilla identified in its own 2026-2028 strategy https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/278/files/2025/11/Mozilla-Summary-Portfolio-Strategy.pdf . Mozilla described its AI browser experiments as early and limited, said rivals were moving faster, and called for partnerships or acquisitions to accelerate new AI-driven products. Mozilla also said search supplied about 80% of portfolio revenue when it prepared the strategy. Generative AI threatens that model by moving queries away from conventional search advertising. Smart Window and Quick Answers give Mozilla new surfaces to test AI services while preserving Firefox's model-choice and privacy positioning. Exa brings an independently built search index and retrieval stack. Exa says its crawlers track more than 500 billion URLs and that its services are used by more than 5,000 companies and 400,000 developers. Those usage figures come from Exa and have not been accompanied by revenue or query-volume disclosures. The browser deployment follows a large financing push. Exa raised a $250M Series C https://exa.ai/blog/announcing-series-c led by Andreessen Horowitz on May 20th at a $2.2B valuation, figures also reported by Bloomberg https://news.bloomberglaw.com/private-equity/andreessen-backed-ai-search-startup-exa-valued-at-2-2-billion . Bryk said the funding would support new search models, infrastructure capable of handling hundreds of thousands of searches per second and a larger sales operation. Firefox now supplies the kind of distribution Exa cannot buy with better retrieval benchmarks alone. Mozilla gets a specialized search layer without spending years recreating a web-scale index. The first test is whether source links, model choice and privacy controls can make browser AI useful enough that users deliberately turn it on.