Can Sridhar Ramaswamy’s nxyz Become the Google of Web3

October 12, 2022

“People say that web3 is going to take over the world, but today’s infrastructure makes it hard for blockchain applications to reach real scale,” Sridhar Ramaswamy co-founder of nxyz said in a post on the company’s website. Today, the Mountain View, California based startup formally launched a beta version which seeks to solve the problem. It aims to provide instant access to data on cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFT), and account balances through “fast, reliable web3 indexing.”

Web3, also known as Web 3.0, is a more decentralized version of the internet which enables users to read, write and execute on the web as well as alter the web into a database, with the integration of Distributed Ledger Technology - blockchain is an example - and data that can help to make Smart Contracts based on the needs of the individual.

“It’s one thing to write smart contracts that can do things. But you need to have a record of, what did they do? And how do I surface that?” Ramaswamy, 55-years-old, told CNBC. “It’s everything from, ‘What does your wallet contain?’ to, ‘If you’ve swapped a USDC token with ethereum, what was the exchange and when did that happen?’” Nxyz’s beta users include BitGo, Fractal, Citrus, crossmint, Bello and other web3 companies.

Web3 technologies include blockchain, artificial intelligence and de-centralized protocols; associate technologies include Searching Using Semantics – the meanings of words, rather than keywords; databases of Information; and Intelligent Digital Personal Assistants, according to GeeksForGeeks.org.

Web 1.0, which came about roughly in 1991, is the read only web wherein users access content online.  Web 2.0, since 2004, is the participative web with user generated content, including podcasting, blogging, social networking, and social media. Web 3.0 is decentralized and all about reading, writing, and owning, according to GeeksForGeeks.org.

Earlier this year, nxyz was spun out of Neeva, an advertising free search engine also co-founded by Ramaswamy. His team of engineers and data scientists at nxyz - and at Neeva - are among those who built the early infrastructure of Google search and advertising serving systems, which involved building real time indexers at scale for billions of data points. Besides Mountain View, nxyz’s employees, which are expected to peak at 20, are based in Austin, Texas, and New York.

Ramaswamy co-founded nxyz with six others, including Bindu Pucha, a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, Purdue University, 2007, and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, Mumbai University; 2001; and Rajaram Gaunker, a B.Tech.in Computer Science, National Institute of Technology, Warangal, India, 2003. Ramaswamy is CEO of both nxyz and Neeva.

In January 2019, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, who met in the early days of search ads while both were working for Google, came up with the idea for Neeva over hikes and coffee. Its pitch to consumers is “Search & browse safely and privately. No tracking. No bias. Search free from corporate influence.” Neeva has more than 40,000 users via the Google Chrome platform.

There is a free basic membership for searches in English, German and French. In the U.S., Neeva also sells a paid premium membership, at $4.95 a month, with enhanced privacy protection tools and other benefits. Consumers don’t care that they pay for water that comes through the tap, Ramaswamy told Forbes. Water is “a low-cost, high-quality product. Why don’t online services work the same way?”

Career Tips and Advice from Sridhar Ramaswamy, 2018, when he was at Google

While at Google, Ramaswamy led the development of new businesses as well as several significant company pivots, including the transition from desktop to mobile. His team also pioneered early infrastructure work in machine learning, storage, and analytics.

Prior to Google, Ramaswamy spent four years as the director of engineering at the startup E.piphany, where he oversaw marketing automation product development. He also held research positions at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Bell Communications Research, focusing on databases and query processing on large scale data.

Ramaswamy has published several papers on database systems and theory and holds several patents. A health and fitness fanatic, he views himself as a reformed academic. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and earned his Master’s and Ph.D. in computer science from Brown University. His wife is a dentist and they have two adult sons who are also software engineers, according to thespinoff.

Today, Ramaswamy also announced that nxyz has raised $40 million in a funding round led by Paradigm, an early investor in Web3 start-ups. Other investors include Greylock Partners – where Ramaswamy is a partner - Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures and web3 angel investors including fellow Indian Americans Balaji Srinivasan, Jaynti Kanani and Surojit Chatterjee.

nxyz did not disclose the valuation at which the funding was raised. Its business launch comes at a troubled time for cryptocurrencies. This is evident, for instance, from the price of bitcoin. The world’s largest digital currency, currently around $19,000, has collapsed nearly three quarters from its all-time high about a year ago.

Speaking to CNBC, Ramaswamy also acknowledged that “there have been a lot of scams” in Web3. But he foresees it being used for financial transactions in video games, purchase of concert tickets, remittance payments and other practical cases.

The bigger issue facing nxyz is giant competitors: Google, whose parent Alphabet has a $1.3 trillion market value, and Meta, parent of Facebook, with a value of $360 billion. Google’s “growth mindset, combined with a monopoly position, produces a bad outcome,” Ramaswamy told CNBC.

Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm, said in a statement that “Nxyz has a truly superlative team that has built the best data indexing infrastructure for Web3, and we at Paradigm are thrilled to support them.” In a statement, Ramaswamy said that nxyz “is exactly the kind of innovation needed to help ensure the widespread adoption and success of web3.”  

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