Earlier this week, Anthropic introduced a web search feature for its AI-driven chatbot platform, Claude, aligning it with many of its competitors. The specific search index powering this feature was initially unclear. However, it appears that Brave Search, operated by the browser developer Brave, might be the source.
This discovery was made by software engineer Antonio Zugaldia, who noted that Anthropic included “Brave Search” in the “subprocessor list” of its documentation, listing the partners involved in processing Claude data. British programmer Simon Willison further reported that searches conducted in both Claude and Brave produced identical citations. Willison also identified a parameter within Claude’s web search functionality named “BraveSearchParams.”
Efforts have been made to contact Anthropic for confirmation, and updates will be provided upon receiving a response.
Brave also supports the search capabilities of another chatbot, Mistral’s platform Le Chat. In February, Brave and Mistral announced that Le Chat would leverage Brave’s search API for live web results.
Many AI companies tend to keep their search index partnerships confidential, potentially due to competitive factors. For instance, OpenAI collaborates with Bing for its ChatGPT search experience, but it also relies on other undisclosed sources.