# William Bryk

> William Bryk is the San Francisco-based co-founder and CEO of Exa, a search infrastructure company founded with former Harvard roommate Jeff Wang in 2021. He studied computer science and physics, led Harvard’s robotics club, interned at SpaceX and Zoox, and worked as a software engineer at Cresta. Researching a history of civilization helped motivate his focus on information retrieval for people and AI applications.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Exa
- **Organizations:** Exa, Cresta, SpaceX, Zoox, Harvard Undergraduate Robotics Club
- **Education:** A.B.; studied physics and computer science, Harvard University, The Ramaz School
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Exa., Co-led Harvard’s robotics club during its expansion to more than 100 members and eight project teams, documented in 2017., Exa reported over 5,000 company users and 400,000 developers in May 2026.

## Career timeline

- **2017** — Co-president of Harvard Undergraduate Robotics Club.
- **2019** — Harvard class of 2019; subsequently worked as a software engineer at Cresta.
- **2021** — Co-founded Exa, originally Metaphor, with Jeff Wang; Y Combinator Summer 2021.
- **2022** — Launched the initial search engine in November.
- **2023** — Announced the web search API for AI.
- **2024** — Renamed Metaphor to Exa on January 25; announced combined $22M seed and Series A funding in July.
- **2025** — Announced $85M Series B led by Benchmark at a $700M company valuation.
- **2026** — Announced $250M Series C led by a16z at a $2.2B company valuation.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Exa.
- Co-led Harvard’s robotics club during its expansion to more than 100 members and eight project teams, documented in 2017.
- Exa reported over 5,000 company users and 400,000 developers in May 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-08** — Discussed hiring, leadership and personal inspirations on Knuckle Up with Nakul Mandan.
- **2026-06** — Discussed search for AI agents with Sarah Wang on the a16z podcast; returned to Ramaz to speak with students.
- **2026-05** — Announced Exa’s $250M Series C, led by a16z, at a $2.2B company valuation.
- **2026-04** — Exa announced integrations with Google’s Gemini Enterprise offerings.

## Links

- Website: https://exa.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-bryk/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/WilliamBryk

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/william-bryk
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-13