Earlier this week, Anthropic introduced a web search feature for its AI-powered chatbot platform, Claude, aligning it with competitors that already integrate live search capabilities. Initially, it was unclear which search index powered this feature—one possibility being Anthropic’s proprietary search engine. However, recent findings suggest that the search functionality is backed by Brave Search, the search engine developed by Brave Software.
Software engineer Antonio Zugaldia noticed on Friday that Anthropic added “Brave Search” to its publicly available subprocessor list, which details external partners processing data for Claude. Additionally, British programmer Simon Willison reported that results from Claude’s web search closely mirrored those from Brave, including identical citations. Further investigation revealed that Claude’s web search function contains a parameter named “BraveSearchParams.”
We’ve reached out to Anthropic for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
Brave Search has been integrated into other AI chatbot platforms as well. In February, Mistral announced that its chatbot, Le Chat, would leverage Brave’s search API to provide live web results.
Many AI companies remain secretive about their search partnerships, likely for competitive reasons. OpenAI, for example, has a known partnership with Microsoft’s Bing but also sources search data from undisclosed providers to enhance ChatGPT’s web search experience.
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