Marqo vs Coveo: AI-Native Ecommerce Search vs Enterprise Search Platform

Coveo and Marqo are two distinct platforms serving enterprise ecommerce teams, each with unique approaches to product discovery. Coveo, established in 2005 as an enterprise search company, is built on a keyword-based engine enhanced with machine learning for re-ranking and personalization, and has expanded into multiple verticals. In contrast, Marqo, founded by former Amazon engineers, focuses exclusively on ecommerce with an AI-native architecture designed to understand shopper intent through product-native intelligence, processing text, images, and attributes within a unified model. Marqo's approach allows for immediate product understanding and relevance without relying on accumulated behavioral data, making it particularly effective for long-tail queries and new products. The platform's capabilities extend to multimodal search and advanced merchandising controls, offering significant revenue uplift as demonstrated by clients like Fashion Nova and Kogan. While Coveo provides a broad, multi-vertical solution with recent additions like generative AI, Marqo's specialized focus on ecommerce discovery aims to deliver faster and more measurable outcomes for retailers.