Imo there's nothing suspicious about, I am an early adopter and I happily pay for it. It simply provides better results than Google, Bing, DDG and any other search engine I've tried.
I'm not a fan of subscription based software/services at all, but for once I think it makes sense when it comes to search queries.
Before I was an avid user of google but seeing the results getting worse and worse made me look for different solutions. For now i'm interested in supporting a search engine that can keep itself above water through my wallet.
I doubt it's shillposting, their search is genuinely very good. Better than Google at the very least - which is admittedly a low bar these days, but not every alternative manages that, e.g. Neeva (in my opinion, anyway).
That said, I stopped using it after they increased prices. I'll reconsider it when they figure out how to decrease them and add privacy-friendly payment methods.
I think Kagi is good, but not $25/mo good. People with SV salaries will disagree, though.
I keep seeing Kagi being pushed and it seems suspicious as Kagi is a subscription based search engine that limits your searches to their paid tiers.
Kagi shillposting with their bot accounts?