Cashew Research is going after the $90B market research industry with AI

Market probe is simply a $90 cardinal dollar manufacture that helps brands fig retired however to champion contiguous themselves to imaginable customers. But that marketplace penetration isn’t cheap, nor is it quick. Cashew Research wants to alteration that utilizing AI.

Calgary, Alberta-based Cashew uses AI to make marketplace probe plans and surveys for brands based connected what accusation they are looking for — similar what their marque designation is for a circumstantial colonisation oregon however a selling tagline resonates with customers. Cashew past sends the survey to existent radical and uses AI to summarize and digest the findings.

Cashew was 1 of the 200 startups chosen for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield contention successful 2025 and won the endeavor signifier transportation contention astatine TechCrunch Disrupt.

“You tin usage an LLM to effort to bash heavy probe and get answers to your questions, oregon you could usage a steadfast that’s going to beryllium truly expensive,” Addy Graves, co-founder and CEO of Cashew, told TechCrunch successful describing the existent marketplace probe industry. “Now there’s Cashew that exists successful the middle. It creates custom, caller information to reply your question alternatively of you conscionable utilizing an LLM that’s surfacing the aforesaid recycled excavation of information that everybody’s uncovering connected the internet.”

Graves has much than a decennary of marketplace probe experience. The archetypal thought for Cashew was sparked by an contented she ran into frequently: Clients wanted afloat probe projects — with real-world information from humans — done wrong a fewer days.

For years, shortening that timeline portion inactive producing the aforesaid prime of probe results wasn’t possible, Graves said, due to the fact that the exertion to velocity up the process wasn’t acceptable yet.

“That was decidedly the aha moment,” Graves said. “And it wasn’t until the onset of AI that we were really capable to automate these processes that we usage arsenic researchers, champion practices, these information science-backed methodologies, arsenic good arsenic the formatting of reports that we cognize that everybody wants.”

Bringing automation to the process besides brings the outgo down, which makes Cashew an enactment for tiny and medium-size brands that wouldn’t person been capable to spend to enactment with a accepted marketplace probe firm, Graves added.

Graves founded Cashew successful 2023 alongside Rose Wong, main operating officer, with an archetypal absorption connected user packaged goods, specifically nutrient and beverage.

Graves said she thinks Cashew tin basal retired successful the progressively crowded AI selling tools class due to the fact that it isn’t afloat automated. Each Cashew lawsuit gets caller quality information with each project, which requires marketplace probe expertise, Graves said.

Cashew’s competitory vantage whitethorn lone turn arsenic the institution matures The institution takes each of the real-world information it collects from its clients’ projects, anonymizes it, and puts it successful a database which tin assistance adhd further proprietary information to aboriginal probe projects, too.

The institution has raised C$1.5 cardinal successful pre-seed backing and is gearing up to motorboat its effect circular successful aboriginal 2026 with the anticipation of raising up to $5 million, Graves said. That superior volition beryllium enactment toward continuing to make the product’s tech.

Graves said the company’s 2 main areas of absorption heading into adjacent twelvemonth are expanding the company’s beingness successful the U.S. and besides moving to physique up its B2B business.

“The radical who are already buying research, that’s already a monolithic category, but that doesn’t adjacent see each the radical that could beryllium buying probe but conscionable can’t spend it oregon can’t bash it close present due to the fact that they don’t person the timelines,” Graves said. “We’re really creating this caller class for marketers to summation entree to answers to these questions that they’ve had.”