For many years, Fortune 500 corporations needed to rent market analysis companies to get significant insights into buyer satisfaction. These providers include a hefty price ticket and sometimes take weeks to finish.

Keplar, a market analysis startup, makes use of voice AI to conduct buyer interviews, offering shoppers with evaluation a lot quicker and at a fraction of the price of conventional analysis consulting companies. On Wednesday, the two-year-old firm introduced that it raised $3.2 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from SV Angel, Widespread Metallic, and South Park Commons.

The concept for Keplar was conceived in 2023 when Dhruv Guliani (above proper), beforehand an engineer at Google, the place he labored on speech and voice AI fashions, and machine studying engineer William Wen, participated within the South Park Commons founder fellowship program.

The duo spoke with market researchers and model managers and realized that the instruments these professionals depend on — written surveys and interviews carried out by people — can now get replaced by conversational AI.

With Keplar, corporations can arrange research in minutes, Guliani informed TechCrunch. The startup’s platform can flip any query concerning the product into an interview moderation information. Keplar’s voice assistant will then attain out to members and can ask them probing questions to grasp what clients like and dislike concerning the product.

If Keplar is granted entry to the consumer’s CRM, the AI voice researcher will attain out to current clients. The outcomes of AI conversations are then packaged into reviews and PowerPoint shows, much like these historically supplied by human market researchers.

Counting on voice bots earlier than developments in LLMs wouldn’t have been doable. However voice AI has turn into so good that research members typically overlook they’re talking to AI, Guliani mentioned.

“These conversations really feel actually actual. While you play every thing again, you may even hear members tackle the AI moderator by title: Ellie, Andrew or Ryan.”

The startup’s clients embrace Clorox and Intercom.

Keplar isn’t the one AI firm attempting to disrupt the shopper analysis market. Bigger rivals embrace Outset, which raised a $17 million Sequence A led by 8VC in June, and Hear Labs, which raised $27 million from Sequoia in April.