{"id":176786,"date":"2025-12-10T00:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T00:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/176786\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T00:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T00:21:07","slug":"cashew-research-is-going-after-the-90b-market-research-industry-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/176786\/","title":{"rendered":"Cashew Research is going after the $90B market research industry with AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Market research is a $90 billion<\/a> industry that helps brands figure out how to best present themselves to potential customers. But that market insight isn\u2019t cheap, nor is it quick. Cashew Research<\/a> wants to change that using AI.<\/p>\n

Calgary, Alberta-based Cashew uses AI to develop market research plans and surveys for brands based on what information they are looking for \u2014 like what their brand recognition is for a specific population or how a marketing tagline resonates with customers. Cashew then sends the survey to real people and uses AI to summarize and digest the findings.<\/p>\n

Cashew was one of the 200 startups chosen for TechCrunch\u2019s Startup Battlefield competition in 2025 and won the Enterprise Stage pitch competition at TechCrunch Disrupt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can use an LLM to try to do deep research and get answers to your questions, or you could use a firm that\u2019s going to be really expensive,\u201d Addy Graves, co-founder and CEO of Cashew, told TechCrunch in describing the current market research industry. \u201cNow there\u2019s Cashew that exists in the middle. It creates custom, fresh data to answer your question instead of you just using an LLM that\u2019s surfacing the same recycled pool of data that everybody\u2019s finding on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graves has more than a decade of market research experience. The original idea for Cashew was sparked by an issue she ran into frequently: Clients wanted full research projects \u2014 with real-world data from humans \u2014 done within a few days.<\/p>\n

For years, shortening that timeline while still producing the same quality of research results wasn\u2019t possible, Graves said, because the technology to speed up the process wasn\u2019t ready yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was definitely the aha moment,\u201d Graves said. \u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t until the onset of AI that we were actually able to automate these processes that we use as researchers, best practices, these data science-backed methodologies, as well as the formatting of reports that we know that everybody wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Bringing automation to the process also brings the cost down, which makes Cashew an option for small and medium-size brands that wouldn\u2019t have been able to afford to work with a traditional market research firm, Graves added.<\/p>\n

Graves founded Cashew in 2023 alongside Rose Wong, chief operating officer, with an initial focus on consumer packaged goods, specifically food and beverage.<\/p>\n

Graves said she thinks Cashew can stand out in the increasingly crowded AI marketing tools category because it isn\u2019t fully automated. Each Cashew client gets fresh human data with each project, which requires market research expertise, Graves said.<\/p>\n

Cashew\u2019s competitive advantage may only grow as the company matures. The company takes all of the real-world data it collects from its clients\u2019 projects, anonymizes it, and puts it in a database, which can help add additional proprietary data to future research projects, too.<\/p>\n

The company has raised C$1.5 million in pre-seed funding and is gearing up to launch its seed round in early 2026 with the hope of raising up to $5 million, Graves said. That capital will be put toward continuing to develop the product\u2019s tech.<\/p>\n

Graves said the company\u2019s two main areas of focus heading into next year are increasing the company\u2019s presence in the U.S. and also working to build up its B2B business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who are already buying research, that\u2019s already a massive category, but that doesn\u2019t even include all the people that could be buying research but just can\u2019t afford it or can\u2019t do it right now because they don\u2019t have the timelines,\u201d Graves said. \u201cWe\u2019re actually creating this new category for marketers to gain access to answers to these questions that they\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Market research is a $90 billion industry that helps brands figure out how to best present themselves to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,13585,103747,82794,85,46,778,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-176786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-automation","12":"tag-battlefield-200","13":"tag-cashew-research","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-techcrunch-disrupt-2025","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}