deepset (Haystack)

About deepset (Haystack)

deepset was founded in 2018 in Berlin by Milos Rusic, Malte Pietsch, and Timo Moller. The company is behind Haystack, an open-source Python framework with over 24,000 GitHub stars that has become one of the standard tools for building production-ready LLM applications—particularly retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, semantic search, and AI agent systems. Haystack provides a modular, pipeline-based architecture where developers compose components—retrievers, generators, embedders, converters, and routers—into production workflows. It supports any LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, local models), any vector database, and complex multi-step agent reasoning. The commercial product, Haystack Enterprise Platform, adds observability, collaboration tools, governance controls, access management, and deployment tooling on top of the open-source framework. It is available as managed SaaS, VPC deployment (customer's cloud), or fully on-premises/air-gapped installation. deepset raised $30 million in a Series B round in August 2023 led by Balderton Capital, with participation from GV (Google Ventures). The company employs approximately 80 people, primarily in Berlin. For European businesses, deepset offers one of the strongest data sovereignty stories in the AI developer tooling space. The company is incorporated as deepset GmbH under German law, fully subject to EU data protection regulation. The enterprise platform supports EU data hosting, and the on-premises option allows fully air-gapped deployments. The company holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and CSA STAR Level 1 certifications.