The State of AI Powered Search and Retrieval — Frank Liu, MongoDB (prev Voyage AI)
Jun 27, 2025 · 12:35
Frank Liu from Voyage AI (now part of MongoDB) presents the state of AI-powered search and retrieval, arguing that embedding quality is core but not sufficient—systems must integrate structured data filtering and agentic query decomposition for real-world RAG applications. He details three live use cases: chatting with codebases (where Continue.dev found Voyage Code 3 best, emphasizing domain-specific evaluation), legal document search requiring pre-filtering by metadata, and agentic retrieval where LLMs decompose queries into multiple sub-queries. Looking ahead, Liu predicts three trends: multimodal embeddings that combine text and images (e.g., Voyage Multimodal 3 embedding Claude 3.5 blog posts), instruction tuning to steer embeddings toward specific document aspects, and the rise of agent-native databases (like MongoDB integrating Voyage for embedding, reranking, and query augmentation within a single platform).
