Market research is $90 billion An industry that helps brands identify how they are best for potential customers. But that market insight isn’t cheap, nor is it quick. Cashew Research want to replace that using AI.
Calgary, Alberta based Cashew uses AI to develop market research plans and surveys for brands based on the information they want – how marketing recognition is for customers. Cashew then sends surveys to real people and uses AI to summarize and digest the findings.
Cashew is one of the 200 Startups selected for TechCrunch’s first battle competition in 2025 and won the Stage Pitch Competition in TechCrunch is annoyingSee rank-.
“You can use an LLM to try to do in-depth research and get answers to your questions, or you can use a company that will be expensive,” said Graves, said Techcrunch, told techcrunch, told Tech Tech Cembah. “Now it’s in Cashe in the middle. Create fresh data to answer your questions instead of you using LLM looking for recycling on the Internet.”
Graves has more than a few words of market research experience. The original idea for Cashew was refined by a frequent problem: clients who wanted a complete research project – with real data from humans – completed in a few days.
For many years, the shortening of the timeline while still producing the same quality of research results, cannot be said, because the technology is fast.
“It was definitely an AHA moment,” Graves said. “And it’s not until the onslaught of AI that we can actually automate that process that researchers use, best practices, as well as a well-known format for everything they want.”
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Bringing automation to the process also brings costs, which makes it an option for small and medium brands that cannot work with traditional research market research, added.
The cemetery was established in Cashew in 2023 between Wong Rose Wong, Chief Operating Officer of Operic, with an initial focus on consumer goods, specifically food and beverages.
Graves said he thinks Cashew can stand out in the growing AI marketing category because it’s incomplete. Every Cashew client gets fresh human data with every project, which requires market research expertise, Graves said.
Cashew’s competitive advantage can only grow as a mature company. The company takes all the real-time data it collects from the client’s projects, anonymized it, and puts it into a database, which can also add additional property data for future research projects.
The company has raised C$1.5 million in Pre-Seed funding and is looking to start seeding in early 2026 with hopes of raising it to $5 million, Graves said. The capital will be established to continue developing product technology.
Graves said the two main areas of focus in the coming year are increasing the company’s presence in the US and also working to build a B2B business.
“People who have bought research, which has become a very large category, but it does not include all the people who can afford to buy, but cannot do it now,” said the grave. “We actually created this new category to get answers to those questions.”