GetWhy, a Danish tech firm specializing in AI-powered consumer research, has successfully secured $34.5 million in a Series A funding round led by California-based VC firm PeakSpan Capital. This funding underscores the increasing investor interest in AI-driven startups that demonstrate significant market traction and have garnered the attention of major clients such as Nestlé, McDonald’s, Nike, and L’Oréal.
The company’s AI-driven platform allows businesses to easily initiate market studies by setting up templates based on their specific needs, like testing a new campaign concept. Customers can upload relevant materials and recruit respondents quickly, leveraging GetWhy’s global consumer panels and specialist recruitment teams. According to Jonas Nielsen, GetWhy’s Chief Marketing Officer,
Our platform is integrated into global panels with consumers, and we have a specialist recruitment team to ensure fast recruitment. We conduct the unmoderated interviews online via video, capturing consumer interviews from their desktop or mobile
A key feature of GetWhy’s service is Bloom, an AI tool that processes video interviews, extracting and analyzing responses to present them as qualitative insights. “The AI technology kicks in when, for example, 10 consumers have been interviewed,” Nielsen explained to TechCrunch. “It is trained to do what a human researcher normally would do: Go through all the videos and find relevant quotes to the business questions in the qualitative study. This process would normally take a researcher days and weeks. The AI is trained to do the analysis in less than 25 minutes.”
“The AI technology kicks in when, for example, 10 consumers have been interviewed,” Nielsen explained to TechCrunch. “It is trained to do what a human researcher normally would do: Go through all the videos and find relevant quotes to the business questions in the qualitative study. This process would normally take a researcher days and weeks. The AI is trained to do the analysis in less than 25 minutes.”
Founded in 2011 under the name UserTribe, GetWhy originally operated as a consultancy. The pivot to a technology-centric business model came with the arrival of Casper Henningsen in 2017, a former professional football player turned chief commercial officer, who later became CEO. The rebranding to GetWhy occurred in January following a name clash, marking a significant shift towards AI.
The substantial investment by PeakSpan is the first major institutional funding for GetWhy, which had previously raised around $30 million through a mix of equity and debt from Scandinavian angels, AL Bank, and the Danish Growth Fund. This latest funding round will likely propel GetWhy further into the forefront of AI-driven market research solutions.
