exa

Note that Hermes Agent's web search defaults to the Nous Portal free tier (500 requests/month). Alternatives: DDGS (free, unlimited), SearXNG (self-hosted), Tavily/Exa (1000/month with full page reading), Brave (2000/month). Recommended combo: search with DDGS, read pages with Tavily, configure via ~/.hermes/config.yaml.

Exa Labs has added Agent and Exa Connect capabilities to its MCP server, enabling AI assistants to search the web and access data from providers like Similarweb and Zoominfo directly within Claude and Codex.

AI infrastructure startups Modal, Cerebras, Exa, and TurboPuffer have shown outstanding performance in the past week.

Garry Tan endorses Exa for AI agents, while Exa announces $250M Series C funding led by a16z at a $2.2B valuation.