Sinequa, Glean, Coveo and Elastic: Enterprise AI Search Compared

Finding the right information at the right moment, across millions of documents, emails, tickets, and reports spread across dozens of systems: it is one of the most persistent challenges in the modern enterprise. Traditional keyword search has long been inadequate. AI-powered enterprise search platforms have stepped in to fill the gap, and the market has become crowded with competing claims.

Sinequa by ChapsVision, Glean, Coveo, and Elastic: these four platforms come up repeatedly in enterprise RFPs and analyst evaluations. Yet they serve very different needs and very different organizational profiles. This article compares them on six concrete criteria, using verified public data. Disclosure: ChapsVision publishes Sinequa.

The criteria that actually matter when evaluating an enterprise search platform

Before diving into each platform, it is worth establishing the dimensions on which enterprise decisions are actually made. In practice, six criteria drive the majority of shortlisting conversations in large organizations:

• Connector depth (data sources covered)
• NLP quality and language coverage
• Deployment options: cloud, on-premise, or hybrid
• Regulatory compliance: HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP eligibility
• Supported industry verticals and complex use cases
• Independent analyst recognition from Gartner and Forrester

Connector depth: a search platform is only as valuable as its ability to reach all data sources where enterprise knowledge lives: SharePoint, Salesforce, SAP, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, proprietary document repositories, Jira, Confluence, and many more. The more heterogeneous the IT environment, the more critical this dimension becomes.

NLP quality and language coverage: for global organizations operating across multiple continents, a search platform that performs well only in English is a real limitation. Advanced NLP means true comprehension of queries in context, not just keyword matching translated from one language to another.

Deployment options: cloud-only, on-premise, or hybrid? In regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, defense, government), data residency is not a preference, it is often a contractual or regulatory requirement. The deployment model directly conditions eligibility in many procurement processes.

Regulatory compliance: HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and FedRAMP authorization are baseline requirements for US regulated industries. Document-level access controls, meaning search results respect the permissions defined in source systems, are equally critical.

Supported industry verticals: some platforms are generalist; others have developed deep expertise in specific industries. The difference shows in the quality of NLP models trained on domain-specific vocabularies and in the richness of sector-specific connectors.

Analyst recognition: Gartner and Forrester have been evaluating this market for years. Their assessments reflect not just product capabilities, but real-world delivery track records and customer satisfaction at scale.

The platforms compared

Sinequa by ChapsVision

Originally founded in France in 2002, Sinequa is now part of ChapsVision and operates globally with offices in New York, London, and Paris. The platform is built for large, complex organizations and has been recognized five consecutive times as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines, and as a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Cognitive Search (Q4 2023). Its US customer base includes global organizations in life sciences, financial services, energy, manufacturing, and government, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and NASA.

Unlike most competitors, Sinequa supports cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployment natively. It indexes over 200 connector types covering 350 document formats, including non-SaaS sources such as SAP, mainframes, and proprietary document management systems that are common in large industrial and regulated organizations.

• 200+ native connectors, 350 document formats
• Advanced NLP in 22+ languages (entity extraction, semantic disambiguation, cross-language retrieval)
• Cloud, on-premise, or hybrid deployment
• HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR certified with document-level access controls
• Neural Search + RAG architecture, natively integrated
• 5x Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader / Forrester Wave Cognitive Search Leader Q4 2023

Glean

Founded in 2019 in Palo Alto, Glean is the fastest-growing player in the US enterprise search market. Its “Work AI” platform combines search, an AI assistant, and agentic AI workflows on a single interface, and has resonated strongly with cloud-native organizations. The numbers are hard to ignore: $200M ARR as of December 2025, doubling in nine months, and a $7.2B valuation after its Series F round. Glean has 100+ SaaS connectors and is deeply integrated with the modern cloud-native stack: Slack, Google Workspace, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, Jira.

Glean is cloud-only and primarily targets US-based organizations. Its NLP is optimized for English. For organizations in regulated industries requiring HIPAA-compliant on-premise or private cloud deployments, or for global enterprises with significant non-English content, it presents real limitations.

• ARR: $200M (December 2025, source: Fortune)
• Valuation: $7.2B (Series F, 2025)
• 100+ SaaS connectors
• Cloud deployment only
• NLP primarily optimized for English
• No on-premise or regulated industry deployment options

Coveo

Founded in Montreal in 2005 and publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CVO), Coveo is built around AI-driven relevance for digital experiences. Its strengths are in e-commerce search personalization and digital customer service, not primarily in internal workplace search for employees. Its FY2025 revenue reached $133.3M, with 700+ enterprise customers and a strategic partnership with SAP that drives 50% of its new Commerce clients. Like Glean, Coveo is cloud-only.

• FY2025 revenue: $133.3M (source: ir.coveo.com)
• 700+ enterprise customers
• SAP strategic partnership
• Cloud deployment only
• Strongest in e-commerce search and digital customer experience
• Gartner Leader in its category

Elastic

The creator of Elasticsearch, Elastic (NYSE: ESTC) is the backbone of search infrastructure for a large share of the technology industry. With FY2025 revenues exceeding $1.4B and approximately 21,500 subscribers, it operates at a different scale than the other platforms here. Elastic is developer-oriented by design: it provides a powerful, flexible foundation for building search applications, but requires significant engineering investment to configure, operate, and integrate. It dominates enterprise search SERP rankings largely due to domain authority, but it is not positioned as a turnkey workplace search solution.

• FY2025 revenues: $1.4B (source: BusinessWire)
• ~21,500 subscribers
• Cloud or on-premise, requires engineering resources
• Developer and infrastructure-oriented, not turnkey
• Strong for RAG architectures with technical teams
• Not a Gartner Leader in the enterprise search / insight engines category

Comparison table

Criterion	Sinequa	Glean	Coveo	Elastic
Cloud deployment	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
On-premise deployment	Yes	No	No	Yes (technical)
Hybrid deployment	Yes	No	No	Partial
Advanced multilingual NLP	Yes, 22+ languages	Partial (EN-first)	Partial	Partial (config.)
Native connectors	Yes, 200+	Yes, 100+ SaaS	Yes, SAP/SFDC	Via API
HIPAA / SOC 2 / FedRAMP eligible	Yes	Partial	Partial	Partial
Regulated industries	Yes	No	Partial	Partial (eng. req.)
Gartner / Forrester Leader	Yes (5x / 2023)	No	Yes (Gartner)	No
Best for…	Large enterprise, regulated, complex data	Cloud-native US scale-ups	E-commerce, customer experience	Dev teams, search infra

A closer look: where the real differences lie

Deployment model: why cloud-only is a showstopper for many enterprises

For a US cloud-native tech company with no regulatory constraints, cloud-only deployment is a non-issue. But for a pharmaceutical company subject to FDA data governance requirements, a federal government agency with FedRAMP mandates, or a financial institution with strict data residency rules, it can make an entire platform ineligible before feature evaluation begins.

Glean and Coveo are cloud-only, full stop. Elastic can be deployed on-premise, but the engineering overhead to do so properly is significant. Sinequa natively supports all three models: public cloud, hybrid, and fully on-premise. This is not a checkbox feature: it is what allowed Sinequa to be deployed within government agencies and heavily regulated enterprise environments where no third-party cloud data storage is permitted.

Compliance: HIPAA, SOC 2, and FedRAMP eligibility

In regulated US industries, the conversation about compliance starts with HIPAA for healthcare and life sciences, SOC 2 Type II for general enterprise security assurance, and FedRAMP for government or government-adjacent workloads. Document-level access control (meaning search results respect the permissions defined in source systems at query time) is equally non-negotiable in environments with strict information governance.

Sinequa holds HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR certifications and enforces document-level access controls natively. This is precisely what has made it the platform of choice for organizations like Pfizer and AstraZeneca, where research documents, clinical trial data, and proprietary formulations must remain accessible only to authorized users. Glean and Coveo have compliance policies, but neither combines the full certification stack with on-premise deployment capabilities.

NLP quality and multilingual coverage

Glean is optimized for English. For a US company with operations primarily in North America and English as the working language, this is adequate. For a US-based multinational with research teams in Germany, manufacturing sites in Japan, and sales organizations across Latin America, it is a material limitation.

Sinequa processes 22+ languages with advanced NLP, including entity extraction, semantic disambiguation, and cross-language retrieval have been built and refined over more than two decades of work on complex enterprise data environments. A query submitted in English should surface relevant documents in French, German, or Spanish without requiring manual configuration per language. This is what Sinequa delivers natively.

Connector depth for heterogeneous environments

Glean’s 100+ SaaS connectors cover the modern cloud stack extremely well: Slack, Google Workspace, Notion, Salesforce, Jira, Confluence. For a software company or a digital-native enterprise, that is most of what matters. For a pharmaceutical company running SAP, a manufacturing firm with proprietary engineering document management systems, or a financial institution with legacy mainframe infrastructure alongside modern cloud tools: the picture is very different.

Sinequa’s 200+ connectors include sources that Glean simply does not reach: SAP, mainframes, proprietary content management platforms, and legacy database systems that remain core infrastructure in industrial and regulated enterprises. The difference is not a matter of product maturity: it reflects different design philosophies. Sinequa was built from the ground up for heterogeneous, high-complexity environments.

Analyst recognition

Sinequa has been a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Insight Engines five consecutive times, and earned Leader status in the Forrester Wave: Cognitive Search (Q4 2023). Coveo also holds a Gartner Leader position. Glean has earned recognition from Fast Company and press coverage for its growth trajectory, but does not have equivalent analyst credentials in the enterprise search category. Elastic is not positioned in this specific Gartner or Forrester evaluation.

Which platform fits which organization?

There is no universal answer here. The right platform depends on your IT environment, regulatory constraints, industry, and organizational profile. In short:

• Sinequa: large US and global enterprises in regulated industries (life sciences, financial services, energy, manufacturing, government) with heterogeneous IT environments requiring on-premise flexibility, multilingual NLP, and deep connector coverage
• Glean: cloud-native US organizations with a modern SaaS stack, primarily English-language content, and no significant on-premise or data residency requirements
• Coveo: enterprises prioritizing digital customer experience: e-commerce search personalization, self-service support portals, and product documentation
• Elastic: engineering teams that need a flexible search infrastructure layer and have the technical resources to build, configure, and maintain it

For large enterprises in regulated industries specifically, Sinequa is consistently the more complete answer. The 30% reduction in engineering search time measured at Siemens, the deployment of 12 distinct search applications at Alstom, and the long-running deployments at organizations like Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and NASA illustrate what the platform delivers in environments where both the data complexity and the compliance requirements are real.

FAQ: best AI Neural Search Solution for Enterprises

01

Is Sinequa HIPAA compliant?

Yes. Sinequa holds HIPAA certification alongside SOC 2 and GDPR. The platform enforces document-level access controls, ensuring that search results respect the permissions defined in source systems. It can also be deployed on-premise or in a private cloud, making it eligible for healthcare and life sciences organizations with strict data residency requirements.

02

What is the main difference between Sinequa and Glean?

Glean is a cloud-only Work AI platform optimized for US cloud-native organizations with modern SaaS stacks and primarily English-language content. Sinequa is built for large enterprises with heterogeneous IT environments: it supports on-premise and hybrid deployment, offers advanced NLP in 22+ languages, and provides 200+ connectors covering sources well beyond the standard SaaS stack.

03

Does Sinequa support on-premise deployment?

Yes. This is one of Sinequa’s key differentiators relative to Glean and Coveo, which are cloud-only. Sinequa can be deployed in the public cloud, in a private cloud or on-premise environment, or in hybrid configurations, depending on the organization’s infrastructure and compliance requirements.

04

How does Sinequa compare to Microsoft Copilot for enterprise search?

Microsoft Copilot is deeply integrated with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and performs well for organizations whose data lives primarily in Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Sinequa is source-agnostic and can index Microsoft sources alongside SAP, Salesforce, mainframes, proprietary systems, and hundreds of other platforms. It also supports on-premise and hybrid deployment that Copilot does not offer.

05

Which platform is best for life sciences and pharmaceutical companies?

Sinequa has a dedicated Sinequa for Life Sciences offering and a documented track record with pharmaceutical organizations including Pfizer and AstraZeneca. Its HIPAA certification, document-level access controls, multilingual NLP for global research teams, and deployment flexibility make it the strongest option in this vertical.

06

How many connectors does Sinequa support?

Sinequa supports 200+ native connectors and 350 document formats, covering the major SaaS platforms (SharePoint, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, Google Workspace) as well as sources specific to complex enterprise environments such as mainframes and proprietary content management platforms.

07

Is Sinequa a recognized Leader by Gartner?

Yes. Sinequa has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines five consecutive times. It is also a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Cognitive Search, Q4 2023 edition.

Conclusion

Glean, Coveo, and Elastic are serious platforms, each strong within its segment. Glean’s growth trajectory in the US market is real, and its Work AI positioning resonates with cloud-native organizations. But the enterprise search market is not a single segment. Large organizations in regulated industries, with complex IT environments, global workforces, and real compliance requirements, face a different set of constraints and need a platform built for that complexity.

That is the case Sinequa has been making for more than twenty years, and the Gartner and Forrester recognition reflects it. For organizations that fit that profile, a conversation with the ChapsVision team is a worthwhile next step.