# Nessie

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/nessie/ · added 2026-11-12 · updated 2026-11-12

**In short.** Nessie (A searchable memory of a person's AI chats and agent sessions, United States): Three paid plans on sale, November 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 2 co-founders; team size 2 on Y Combinator's company page, November 2026. Launched 6 November 2025; still running.

A searchable memory of a person's AI chats and agent sessions · United States · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Tools for using AI models

- Outcome: Three paid plans on sale, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: 6 November 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 12
- Team: 2 co-founders; team size 2 on Y Combinator's company page, November 2026
- Outside funding: Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch and other named backers; no amount stated in the sources read
- Main factor: Own problem
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Running, B2B, Developer tools

Links:

- Visit nessielabs.com: https://nessielabs.com/

**The product.** A Mac and Windows app that copies a person's conversations from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other AI services into one local library. The user, and the user's AI agents, can then search it, chat with it and turn it into shareable summaries called contexts.

**Why it worked.** Nessie started from a problem of its own founders: a long Gemini conversation that hit its token limit and became unusable. The company's about page says Anna Zhang lost months of research this way. The product has since been rebuilt three times, and today it is a memory layer that AI agents can query.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Nessie is a memory layer for AI work that keeps the history of a person's chats and lets people and agents search it. An agent is an AI program that works through tasks, such as Claude Code or Cursor. Agents reach the library through a command-line tool or an MCP connector, a standard way for an AI program to call outside tools. The company's pages list 28 sources, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Codex and Obsidian.

Anna Zhang and Tiger Wang are the founders; Y Combinator lists the team size as 2. The oldest dated copy of the company's site is from 15 July 2025, and the Y Combinator launch post is dated 6 November 2025. The pricing page lists Plus at US$28, Pro at US$79 and Team at US$80 per seat. Each is a monthly price billed yearly, with a 7-day free trial.

No revenue figure, user count for the current product or named paying customer was found, so the story is grade E. A price list, an in-app plan chooser and billing entries in the changelog show that paid plans can be bought without a sales call. No source states that a customer has paid.

## Why did Nessie work?

### The first version came from a founder's own lost Gemini thread

The about page says Anna Zhang used one Gemini conversation as her main thinking space until it hit the one-million-token limit. Months of research became unreachable. The founders built the first product for themselves, and the blog says they used it every day.

### The team rebuilt the product three times in six months

Anna Zhang wrote on 19 April 2026 that a chat app became a memory layer, and then something else. She says users did not know what to do with an organized archive. The company then moved from filing chats to producing shareable contexts and, by November 2026, to serving agents.

### It reads chats through the user's own sign-in, not an extension

The earlier version needed a Chrome extension for single chats. Anna Zhang wrote that it was clunky, “because the DOM on ChatGPT and Claude broke constantly”. The current docs say the user signs in once and Nessie syncs every 15 minutes. The user's login stays on the Mac.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's docs, privacy policy and changelog. They are grade C.

- The app runs on the user's Mac first. The home page says the library starts on the user's machine, and Cloud Sync is opt-in.
- For ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, the privacy policy says Nessie opens the provider's login page in a web view. It says session tokens stay on the Mac.
- Agents read the library through a CLI, an MCP server and agent skills that expose the same commands and permissions, according to the home page.
- The privacy policy says summaries and search indexes are made by sending conversation content to the company's server and on to third-party AI providers. It names none of them.
- The privacy policy says the public marketing pages use ad-measurement tools such as the Meta Pixel.

Sources: [8, 13, 1, 9]

## Who tried this before Nessie, and why did they fail?

Two companies in our database of failed startups built tools to collect and share knowledge. The values below are from that database, were read on 12 November 2026 and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Springpad (2008 to 2014; funding US$7.5M cash burned; cause: Business model)

- Promise: A web tool to collect, organize and find articles, videos and recipes, positioned as a competitor to Evernote.
- Why it died: The record says it could not turn its technology into a business. It names the lack of a monetization strategy beyond free use as the main failure.
- Record: 

### Memo (2020 to 2023; funding US$5.0M cash burned; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A tool for engineering, product and design teams to create, share and archive rich media memos.
- Why it died: The record says it could not compete with entrenched tools that quickly added similar features, and that it needed whole teams to adopt it.
- Record: 

## What changed

Both records tried to be the place where people keep what they know. The Springpad record names the lack of a way to charge, and the Memo record names competition from established tools. Nessie's founders describe a related problem themselves: an organized archive did not tell users what to do next. The company answered by selling access to the archive for AI agents and for teams.

One thing is different from the records. The content now lives in tools owned by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others, and those companies have their own memory features. The sources do not show how many people pay for a layer above them.

## Can one person copy Nessie now?

**Verdict: The pattern can be copied; the result is not shown.**

Two founders can build for a problem they have, and keep changing the product until the use is clear. The sources show a price list and billing features, and no customer or revenue. Treat this as a pattern, not as proof that it earns.

1. Use your own product daily, and note where it stops being useful.
2. Change the product when users do not know what to do with the result.
3. Offer the data to agents through a CLI and an MCP connector, with the same permissions as the user.
4. Publish a price list early, with a trial, and let users choose a plan in the app.

**What is still open.** Other places where AI work piles up with no memory: meeting notes, support tickets, design reviews and research notebooks.

## How much revenue does Nessie make? The numbers, graded

A two-founder Y Combinator company on its third product, with a self-serve price list and no revenue figure

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company and founders | Nessie Labs, Inc.; Anna Zhang, co-founder and CEO; Tiger Wang, co-founder and CTO | C | The company's about page names both as co-founders, and its footer reads Nessie Labs, Inc. Y Combinator's page lists the same two as active founders. | [5, 3] |
| Start of the company | 2025; first dated copy of the site 15 July 2025 | C | An archive copy of nessielabs.com from 15 July 2025 carries the title Nessie Labs - Unified AI Memory. Y Combinator's page says Founded: 2025, batch Fall 2025. The archive had no earlier copy. | [18, 3] |
| Earlier products of the same company | Infinite Chat, then an auto-organizer (1 November 2025), then the context layer (12 April 2026) | C | Anna Zhang's blog post of 19 April 2026 says the company rebuilt Nessie from scratch three times in six months. The name Nessie stayed the same. | [6, 7] |
| Team | 2 people; 3 open jobs | C | Y Combinator's company page says Team Size: 2 and lists three open jobs, read on 12 November 2026. The about page names only the two founders. | [3, 5] |
| Funding | Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch; BoxGroup, Pioneer Fund, Precursor and others named; no amount | C | The company's Y Combinator page says Backed by BoxGroup, Pioneer Fund, Y Combinator, Precursor, and more. The about page adds a few angels. No source read gives an amount. | [3, 5] |
| What is sold today | Sync and search of AI conversations and agent sessions, with CLI and MCP access, sharing and team features | C | The home page and docs describe 28 sources, from ChatGPT and Claude to Cursor, Obsidian and Gmail. The Mac app is the main download. A Windows version was announced on 11 June 2026. | [1, 8, 7] |
| Prices today | Plus US$28, Pro US$79, Team US$80 per seat, each a monthly price billed yearly | C | The company's pricing page, read on 12 November 2026. It states a 7-day free trial and an on-prem plan with custom terms. | [2] |
| Paid plans on sale since | at least 9 August 2026 | C | An archive copy of the pricing page from 9 August 2026 shows the same three prices and the trial. The changelog of 8 May 2026 lists a redesigned pricing and billing experience. | [16, 7] |
| How a plan is bought | In the Nessie app after download; trial users can start a paid plan at any time | C | The pricing page says plans are selected in the app. The changelog of 16 June 2026 says trial users can start a paid plan without waiting. The terms say prices are disclosed before purchase. No payment processor is named. | [2, 7, 14] |
| How chats from other AI services come in | The user signs in to the other service in a web view; session tokens stay on the user's Mac | C | The privacy policy and the ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini docs describe this. New and updated conversations sync every 15 minutes. The pages do not mention those services' own terms. | [13, 9, 10, 11] |
| Sign-ups of the earlier auto-organizer | about 1,900 users and more than 300,000 conversations imported in one week | C | Anna Zhang's blog post of 19 April 2026 states this for a launch in November. The post does not say how many of these users stayed. No figure for the current product was found. | [6] |
| Paying customers | No source states that any customer has paid | C | The home page, pricing, docs, blog, changelog and Y Combinator pages were read. They show a price list and billing features, and no customer, revenue or paid-user number. | [1, 2, 7, 3] |

How to read this table. Grade C means the company states the value, or a dated archive copy of its own page shows it. No value is grade A or B, and no calc value is used.

## Pricing

Nessie prices read from the company's pricing page on 12 November 2026 (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plus | 28 |  | up to 5 connected accounts, unlimited sync, MCP access, CLI, usage limits on context generation and chat |
| Pro | 79 |  | unlimited connected accounts, context generation and chat |
| Team | 80 per seat |  | team sharing, owner-managed billing, admin dashboard, shared skill layer, Ontology |
| On-prem | custom |  | self-hosted deployment; the button reads Talk to us |

The page shows each price as a monthly amount billed yearly, and a Yearly switch that the page says saves 20%. The monthly price loads by script and could not be read. All plans start with a 7-day free trial. On-prem is a custom deployment with a Talk to us button.

## When did Nessie launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a memory tool for AI chats in July 2025 to a context layer for agents and teams with a price list in November 2026.

- **15 July 2025** (grade C [18]): The oldest archive copy of nessielabs.com is titled Nessie Labs - Unified AI Memory.
- **1 November 2025** (grade C [7]): Version 1.3 adds auto-organization into topics, search, a Chrome extension for single chats and an import flow for exported data files.
- **6 November 2025** (grade C [4, 17]): Y Combinator launch post Nessie: Perplexity for Your Mind, by Anna and Tiger. An archive copy of the site from 7 November is titled AI Knowledge Base for Your Mind.
- **12 April 2026** (grade C [7]): Version 1.4 adds context generation, chat across all history and sync with ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Gemini, Perplexity and OpenClaw, with no Chrome extension.
- **8 May to 16 June 2026** (grade C [7]): The changelog lists a redesigned pricing and billing experience, per-seat team billing, a Windows app and paid-plan upgrades for trial users.
- **11 November 2026** (grade C [7]): The latest changelog entry adds a Pocket integration and embeds of YouTube videos and X posts in contexts.

## What could go wrong for Nessie?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure was found, so the story is grade E. The home page, pricing, about, docs, privacy, terms, blog, changelog and Y Combinator pages were read. No source states that a customer has paid. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile, a press interview or a named customer. The oldest dated page is from 15 July 2025, and the same company name was used for all three products.
- **Sync uses the user's sign-in on other AI services.** The privacy policy says Nessie opens each provider's official login page in a web view and keeps session tokens on the Mac. The pages read do not say what OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Perplexity allow for such syncing, and this story did not read those terms. The pages mention no bot-check bypass. The changelog of 14 April 2026 lists more reliable integration “when providers rate-limit syncing”.
- **Home-page logos are not sourced.** The home page shows a Backed by Y Combinator badge, which Y Combinator's page confirms. Under Used by people and teams at, it shows four logos: Alpha School, Basic Capital, OMNIA Partners and TD Ameritrade. No page read says who at these organizations uses the product or whether they pay. The terms require users to be at least 18, and no page read addresses pupils.
- **The team may be larger than two.** Y Combinator lists a team size of 2 and three open jobs, a founding engineer, a forward deployed engineer and an intern. The home page names no other staff. The directory value is undated, and the company does not publish a headcount.

## Sources

1. Nessie home page: The context layer for AI-native teams — https://nessielabs.com/ (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the product description, the source list, the FAQ, the logos and the badge.
2. Nessie pricing page — https://nessielabs.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the plans, the prices, the trial and the statement that plans are chosen in the app.
3. Y Combinator company page: Nessie — https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nessie (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the founders, the batch, the year founded, the team size, the open jobs and the backers.
4. Y Combinator launch page: Nessie: Perplexity for Your Mind — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Omc-nessie-perplexity-for-your-mind (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026 as the page's data file. The company's own post, created on 6 November 2025, with 34 votes.
5. Nessie about page — https://nessielabs.com/about (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the founders' roles and the origin of the product.
6. Nessie blog: Why We Killed Our Product Twice — https://nessielabs.com/blog/why-we-killed-our-product-twice (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Written by Anna Y. Zhang and dated 19 April 2026. Source for the earlier products and the sign-up figures.
7. Nessie changelog — https://nessielabs.com/changelog (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the release dates, the billing entries and the sync changes.
8. Nessie docs: How integrations work — https://nessielabs.com/docs/integrations-overview (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the list of sources and the statement on where credentials stay.
9. Nessie docs: ChatGPT integration — https://nessielabs.com/docs/chatgpt (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the sign-in step and the 15-minute sync.
10. Nessie docs: Claude integration — https://nessielabs.com/docs/claude (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the sign-in step and the 15-minute sync.
11. Nessie docs: Gemini integration — https://nessielabs.com/docs/gemini (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the sign-in step and the 15-minute sync.
12. Nessie docs: Sync not working — https://nessielabs.com/docs/sync-issues (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the expired-session cause of failed web-based syncs.
13. Nessie privacy policy — https://nessielabs.com/privacy (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Effective 3 September 2026. Source for how provider sync works and for the ad-measurement tools.
14. Nessie terms of service — https://nessielabs.com/terms (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Effective 30 September 2026. Source for the age limit and the payment terms.
15. Nessie blog index — https://nessielabs.com/blog (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Five posts from 19 April to 20 October 2026; none is marketed to children or students.
16. Internet Archive copy of the Nessie pricing page, 9 August 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260809072233/https://nessielabs.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the three prices and the trial on that date.
17. Internet Archive copy of the Nessie home page, 7 November 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20251107000640/https://nessielabs.com/ (grade C). Read the page title only on 12 November 2026; the page loads its content by script. Title: Nessie - AI Knowledge Base for Your Mind.
18. Internet Archive copy of the Nessie home page, 15 July 2025 — https://web.archive.org/web/20250715120046/https://nessielabs.com/ (grade C). Read the page title only on 12 November 2026. Title: Nessie Labs - Unified AI Memory. The oldest copy the archive offered.
19. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Record pages read on the website on 12 November 2026. AI-written summaries, not independently verified.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Nessie? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Nessie).