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by gk1 927 days ago
As another signal, check out this report by Streamlit, which shows the popularity of different vector databases among Streamlit apps: https://state-of-llm.streamlit.app/#third

Faiss and Pinecone are at the top (disclosure: I'm from Pinecone). But Faiss isn't really a full-fledged vector DB. Pinecone is a managed option which is out of the question for a company like Twitter and maybe for you (although you should consider it). After that comes Chroma in third, and then Qdrant, and then Weaviate.

Chroma has a big following by virtue of being plugged into the AI ecosystem in SF. Qdrant seems to be doing great work but their location in Europe is probably not helping.
4 comments
beernet 927 days ago
Regarding your last sentence: the European HQ might not exactly help for non-EU customers, but much much more so for actual EU customers (which is a multi billion Dollar market by itself). Sensitive EU companies would not use Pinecone, even if they wanted to.
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mac-chaffee 927 days ago
We have been working this year to increase our US presence, and we're hiring now: https://join.com/companies/qdrant/9929148-cloud-platform-dev...

Source: I work at Qdrant from the US :)

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alchemist1e9 927 days ago
The local API mode is very nice feature over others. Having an almost sqlite3 style local db that then works the same in server mode is a very good feature.

I will be trying it instead of Weaviate this week. I’m also slightly confused about embedding vector generation vs other db who have that built in. Just need to read more I guess

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behnamoh 927 days ago
Interestingly the effect of location is also visible when you compare LMQL and Guidance for constrained generation. LMQL seems to be a great option but has received much less attention compared to Guidance, maybe partly due to the fact that it comes from Europe not the US.
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smurda 927 days ago
Disagree on location as a determining factor for great technology. You’re citing stats around market adoption because of marketing - not quality of the technology.

If Twitter chose to use Qdrant for Grok, it doesn’t matter that Qdrant is out of Berlin.

What matters is that Qdrant is the most performant, and it’s an open-source vectordb, not a closed-source vectordb like Pinecone.

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