xAI's Grok Build Now Lets Coding Agents Search 500B URLs Instantly
Exa's AI-native web search is now a one-command install inside xAI's Grok Build terminal agent, bringing real-time search and deep research to coding workflows
- Exa's AI-native web search is now an official plugin in the Grok Build marketplace, installable with a single
/marketplacecommand. - The plugin adds three tools: real-time web search, URL reading (clean markdown output), and a deep multi-step research skill with citations.
- Grok Build is xAI's terminal coding agent scoring 70.8% on SWE-Bench Verified, competing directly with Claude Code and Cursor.
- Exa indexes 500B+ URLs with sub-150ms Instant mode and semantic search that returns structured, LLM-ready results instead of raw HTML.
- Standard Exa search costs $7 per 1,000 requests; Deep Search runs $12-$15 per 1,000 requests; new accounts get free credits at signup.
- Exa has raised $361M total, including a $250M Series C from a16z at a $2.2B valuation, backing its push into every major agent platform.
Exa, the AI-native search API built for agents, is now available as a plugin inside xAI's Grok Build terminal coding agent. Any Grok Build user can now give their coding agent live web access, page reading, and multi-step research without leaving the terminal.
What each tool actually does
Grok Build is a terminal-based AI coding agent from xAI. It runs up to eight AI agents in parallel across a plan-search-build pipeline and scores 70.8% on SWE-Bench Verified, putting it in direct competition with Claude Code and Cursor.
Exa is a search engine built specifically for LLMs. Where keyword-based search returns HTML-heavy pages and short snippets optimized for human browsing, Exa returns structured, semantically ranked results that an agent can consume directly. Developers using general-purpose search APIs typically have to build custom crawlers, parsers, and ranking logic on top just to make results usable inside an agent workflow. Exa skips that layer entirely.