--- title: Exa + Kite description: Kite uses Exa to find companies and people that match a plain-language description, read the pages behind them, catch account news, and see what a competitor's page said before it changed, with the source kept for every fact. slug: /integrations/exa page_type: integration primary_question: What can Kite do with Exa? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-10-11' date_modified: '2026-10-11' integration: name: Exa categories: - sales intelligence - other connection_types: - built in - API key customer_account_requirement: optional capabilities_verified: '2026-10-10' vendor_url: https://exa.ai related_use_cases: - /use-cases/build-b2b-lead-lists.md --- # Exa + Kite ## Key Takeaways - Kite uses Exa to find companies and people that match a description written in plain words, such as "multi-location physical therapy practices that take bookings online," and keeps the page that shows why each one fits. - Kite also uses Exa to read the pages behind its research, including company sites, team pages, conference agendas, news stories, and earlier versions of a competitor's page. - Exa is built into Kite, so you don't need an Exa account. You can add your own Exa API key if you want Kite to build Websets, set up monitors, and run research tasks in your Exa account. - Through the built-in connection, Kite only reads. With your own key, it can also create and manage Websets, monitors, imports, and research tasks in your account. Capabilities verified October 10, 2026. ## How can an AI marketing agent use Exa for marketing? An AI marketing agent uses Exa to find the companies, people, and pages that match a plain-language description, then reads those pages and keeps the link behind every fact it uses. Exa is a search engine built for AI agents. It searches by meaning instead of matching keywords, so a request for "independent coffee roasters that sell subscriptions online" returns the roasters' own websites rather than articles about coffee subscriptions. It can limit a search to companies, people, news, or financial reports, and it returns the text of each page along with its address. That makes Exa the engine behind a lot of everyday marketing research: - building a list of target accounts - finding who runs marketing at each account - collecting a conference's speakers and sponsors - catching news at the companies you sell to - checking what a competitor's pricing page said last spring Kite is one example of an agent that does this work. It decides what to look for from what it already knows about your business, runs the searches, reads the results, and turns them into a lead list, a call brief, or an outreach plan. ## Marketing jobs Kite can do with Exa Kite reaches for Exa whenever a marketing job starts with finding the right companies, people, or pages, or with reading what they've published. The jobs below follow an account from the first search to the first conversation. ### Find companies that match your ideal customer Kite uses Exa to turn a description of your ideal customer into a list of real companies, each with the website that shows why it fits. It writes the description from what it already knows about your best customers, then runs Exa's company search, which returns up to 100 matches at a time. Say you sell scheduling software to physical therapy practices. A keyword search for "physical therapy clinic" mostly turns up directories and health articles. Kite asks Exa instead for multi-location physical therapy practices that let patients book online, and it gets back the practices' own sites. It reads each site to check the details that matter to you, such as how many locations the practice runs and whether booking is already online. Then it keeps the page that shows each point. The practices that pass become your account list. Kite's other built-in sources, such as Apollo, add the contacts and work emails. Kite then scores each prospect from one to five against your criteria and brings the list back to Slack. ### Find the person who holds the role you sell to Exa's people search finds who holds a given role at a given company, along with their public LinkedIn profile and the page that names them. When you need the head of marketing at each of 40 accounts, Kite runs that search company by company. It records each person's name, title, LinkedIn profile, and source, which is often the company's own team or about page. Kite then passes each name and company to its contact sources to find a work email. The finished list has a person, a reason they're on it, and a way to reach them. ### Turn a conference into a list of people worth meeting Kite uses Exa to find a conference's speaker and sponsor pages, then reads them to build a list of the people and companies worth meeting. It pulls out each speaker's name, title, and company, and each sponsor's name and, where the page shows it, sponsorship level. Say your team is heading to a retail technology conference in November. Three weeks out, Kite collects the speakers and sponsors, marks the ones that match your ideal customer, and finds the right contact at each sponsor. It can then write a short meeting request for each person that mentions their session or their booth. You approve the messages in Slack before any of them go out. ### Catch news at your target accounts Kite uses Exa's news search to find recent stories about the companies on your list, limited to the dates you care about. For each account, it looks for the moments that give you a reason to reach out, such as a funding round, a new marketing leader, a product launch, or an expansion into a new region. Every story comes back with its headline, date, and link. The same search works on topics as well as companies. When a story breaks in your category, Kite can find it while it's fresh and draft a LinkedIn post with your take on it. You can ask Kite to run either search every week on a schedule, and it brings the new stories to Slack. ### See what a competitor's page said before it changed Exa keeps stored versions of many public pages, and Kite can search or read them as of a past date. When a competitor relaunches its pricing page, Kite reads the version from before the change and the version live today. Then it lays out what moved, such as the plan names, the prices, the headline, and the customer the page now speaks to. Kite reads the newest version Exa stored on or before the date you ask about, so the comparison depends on when Exa saved its copies. For a page Exa didn't store around that date, Kite can turn to the archived copies of websites it uses for its other research into how a company's site has changed. ### Read the pages behind a sales call or brief Kite reads up to 20 pages at a time through Exa and keeps each page's address next to what it took from it. Before a sales call, it might read the prospect's homepage, pricing page, latest blog post, and open job listings. Then it writes a one-page brief covering what the company sells, what changed recently, and the question worth opening with. It can ask for the current version of each page, so the brief reflects what's live that morning. This reading sits under every other job here. When Kite says an account fits, you can click through to the page that shows it. ### Build Websets and run research tasks in your own Exa account With your own Exa API key connected, Kite can also work inside your Exa account, where the results stay for your team. That opens up three more kinds of work: - **Websets.** A Webset is a list of matches that Exa builds and keeps in your account. Kite sets one up from a description, such as "agencies in the US that build Shopify stores for beauty brands," plus the criteria each match has to meet. It can add columns that Exa fills in for every match, such as headcount or notable clients. It can also leave out companies you already have by pointing Exa at an earlier Webset or a list you've imported. - **Monitors.** Kite attaches a monitor to a Webset so Exa runs the search again on a schedule, as often as once a day, and adds new matches as they appear. - **Research tasks and cited answers.** For a question that needs many sources, Kite starts an Exa research task and gets back either a report with citations or the specific fields it asked for, such as each competitor's pricing model and cheapest plan. For a narrower question, it asks Exa for a direct answer with the sources attached. Say you want to hear about every new beauty-brand agency as it appears. Kite sets up the Webset with a weekly monitor, and your team can open the growing list in Exa whenever it wants. ## What Kite reads and changes in Exa Through the built-in connection, Kite only reads from Exa. With your own key, it can also create and manage Websets, monitors, imports, and research tasks in your Exa account. ### Information Kite can read - **Search results.** Companies, people, news stories, publications, personal sites, and financial reports that match a description. Each result has its title, link, and highlights, plus a summary or the full page text when Kite asks for them. Kite can limit a search to certain websites or to a range of publication dates. - **Page text.** The text, highlights, and summaries of up to 20 known pages at once, read as they are today or as Exa stored them on an earlier date. With your key, Kite can also read the pages a site links to in the same request. - **Cited answers and research results.** With your key, a direct answer with its sources, and the finished report or fields from a research task. - **Your Exa account's activity.** With your key, the research tasks and imports in your account, and the activity log Exa keeps as Websets find new matches. ### Information Kite can create or change These all require your own Exa API key. - **Websets.** New Websets with a search, criteria, extra columns, and exclusions, and removal of Websets you no longer need. - **Monitors.** Schedules that rerun a Webset's search and add new matches. - **Imports.** New imports that bring your own list of companies into Exa, plus renaming and removing them. - **Research tasks.** New research tasks with the instructions and output fields Kite sets. ## How Kite connects to Exa Kite is your AI marketer in Slack. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Exa is built into Kite and runs on Kite's own Exa account, so there's nothing to connect before Kite searches the web or reads a page. Kite already uses it when it researches your company during onboarding. Every job on this page except the work inside your own Exa account runs this way. You can also add an API key for your own Exa account. Kite uses the access granted to that key to create Websets, monitors, imports, and research tasks there, and to ask Exa for cited answers. That work counts against your Exa plan, and the Websets stay in your account for your team to open in Exa. A short request is enough to start, such as "Find 50 companies that look like our best customers and tell me who runs marketing at each." Kite proposes the description and criteria it plans to search with, then comes back to Slack with the list. ## Playbooks using Exa - How to research target accounts with Exa (coming soon) Kite turns your ideal customer profile into Exa searches, reads each company's site to confirm the fit, and returns an account list with the reason each company belongs and the page that shows it. - How to research target accounts and enrich contacts with Exa, Clay (coming soon) Exa finds and researches the accounts first. Kite then sends the people worth pursuing to Clay, which fills in work emails, phone numbers, and other contact details from several providers in one pass. ## Where Exa fits in Kite's marketing work ### [Build qualified B2B lead lists](/use-cases/build-b2b-lead-lists.md) Exa handles the first two steps of a lead list: finding companies that match your ideal customer and finding the right person at each one. Kite's contact sources add the work emails, and Kite scores and ranks the result. ### Find every company or person that fits a description (coming soon) Some jobs need the complete list, such as every agency in a niche or every product in a software category. Exa's search by meaning reaches the smaller names that a keyword search buries. With your own key, a Webset and monitor keep the list growing after the first pass. ### Run an in-depth competitor analysis (coming soon) Exa gives Kite a competitor's own pages, both as they read today and as they read before a change. Kite combines that with its other research on funding, headcount, ads, and search rankings to build one cited report. ### Track news at your target accounts (coming soon) Exa's news search, limited by date, is how Kite catches a funding round or a new executive at an account soon after it's announced. Kite turns each story into a reason to reach out and a suggested first message. ### Prepare for sales calls with account research (coming soon) Exa reads the prospect's current pages and recent coverage, and Kite condenses them into a short brief with a link behind each point. ## Common questions ### How is Exa different from searching Google? Exa is built for software that reads the results, so it returns each page's text and highlights along with the link. It matches a description by meaning, which suits requests like "B2B software companies that charge per seat and sell to hospitals." For questions about what ranks on Google and how often people search for a term, Kite uses its built-in DataForSEO data instead. ### Can Exa find email addresses? Exa sometimes turns up an email address that a person has published on a public page, but it doesn't check whether the inbox works. For outreach lists, Kite finds and checks work emails through its contact sources, such as Apollo, and uses Exa for the companies, people, and sources around them.