Horizontal Search versus Vertical Workflows
Danny Wheller, VP of Business & Strategy at Hebbia, on vertical vs horizontal enterprise AI
This split shows that enterprise AI is separating into two budgets, one for finding information across the company, and another for finishing high stakes workflows where accuracy and output quality matter more than broad adoption. Glean is sold broadly as a lower cost search layer across many employees, while Hebbia is sold to a smaller group in finance and legal at much higher seat prices because it helps turn raw documents into diligence work, contract review, memos, and pitchbooks.
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The product boundary is concrete. Glean started as cross app search and later added chat and agents. Hebbia built around full document reasoning and a tabular agent workflow called Matrix, which is designed to process large document sets and produce work product, not just surface files.
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The pricing tells the story. Glean has pursued wall to wall deployment, with pricing discussed around $20 per month per seat and enterprise contracts scaling much higher. Hebbia starts around $3,000 to $3,500 per seat per year for Lite and $10,000 for full access, which fits a power user tool for bankers, lawyers, and analysts.
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This is why the tools can coexist inside one account. Horizontal tools win when a company wants one search box over Slack, email, docs, and tickets. Vertical tools win when the user needs an agent that follows a domain workflow, checks sources, and produces an artifact a team can actually use in a deal, case, or review process.
Going forward, the line between search and work will keep moving downstream. Glean is pushing from retrieval into no code agents, while Hebbia is pushing deeper into repeatable agent led finance and legal workflows. The winners will be the products that become part of daily operating rhythm, not just an occasional place to ask a question.