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Two-Tower Retrieval Explained: The Architecture Behind Modern Search
78
Retrieval & Search Research
Mixpeek Team
June 18, 2026
Summary
Nearly every large-scale recommendation and search system runs a two-tower architecture: one encoder for queries, one for items, trained so relevant pairs land close in a shared vector space. This explainer covers why the split enables billion-scale serving and where cross-encoders re-enter for reranking.
two-towerretrievalrecommendation-systemsembeddingsarchitecture
About this video
Nearly every large-scale recommendation and search system runs a two-tower architecture: one encoder for queries, one for items, trained so relevant pairs land close in a shared vector space. This explainer covers why the split enables billion-scale serving and where cross-encoders re-enter for reranking.