Autentic AI
AI market research platform for consumer and expert insights, accelerating studies from months to days.
Website: https://www.autentic.ai/
Cover Block
From the public record
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Autentic AI |
| Tagline | AI market research platform for consumer and expert insights, accelerating studies from months to days [Tech.eu, October 2026] |
| Headquarters | Barcelona, Spain [Tech.eu, October 2026] |
| Founded | 2026 [Forbes España, October 2026] |
| Stage | Pre-seed [Forbes España, October 2026] |
| Business model | SaaS |
| Industry | Market research software [Demòcrata, October 2026] |
| Technology | AI / Machine Learning [Tech.eu, October 2026] |
| Geography | Western Europe |
| Growth profile | Venture scale |
| Founding team | Dani Diestre, Aniol Carreras, Jacob Bamio [Forbes España, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026] |
| Funding label | Pre-seed |
| Total disclosed | €1.5 million [Forbes España, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026] |
Links
From the public record
- Website: https://www.autentic.ai/
The Short Version
PUBLIC Autentic AI is a Barcelona-based startup building an AI market research platform that interviews consumers and experts at scale, a timely proposition because it is trying to compress a slow, service-heavy category into software-like turnaround times just as investors are funding AI-native workflow replacement across research functions [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026]. Founded in 2026 by Dani Diestre, Aniol Carreras, and Jacob Bamio, the company is early by any conventional benchmark, but it has already drawn attention from Spanish tech and business press after announcing a €1.5 million pre-seed round in October 2026 [Forbes España, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026].
The product thesis is straightforward: Autentic AI says it can automate market studies end to end, using AI to conduct simultaneous interviews with hundreds of consumers and specialists and then produce findings in days rather than the weeks or months associated with traditional studies [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026]. That differentiation appears to rest less on a novel research category and more on execution around speed, workflow automation, and participant recruitment infrastructure, which public coverage says the new capital will help expand [Demòcrata, October 2026].
The founding team brings relevant product and operating exposure from Spanish and European tech companies, with Diestre previously linked to Cafler and PayFit, Carreras to Lifull Connect, and Bamio to Factorial according to the reporting reviewed [Forbes España, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026]. eu, October 2026].
What merits attention over the next 12 to 18 months is not the headline promise alone but whether Autentic AI can convert early narrative momentum into verifiable commercial evidence: named customers, repeat usage, proof that AI-led interviews hold up on research quality, and a durable recruitment engine for respondents and experts. Public sources do not yet establish customer names, deployment depth, or independent outcome data, so the near-term investment question is whether the company can substantiate speed claims with enterprise adoption rather than media visibility alone [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026].
Single-source, plausible -- Core company, founder, and funding facts are corroborated by Forbes España, Tech.eu, and Cinco Días; product performance and traction claims remain largely company-described or LinkedIn-sourced.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Pre-Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry / Vertical | Other |
| Technology Type | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | Western Europe |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (3+) |
| Funding | Pre-seed, total disclosed approximately $1,600,000 [Forbes España, October 2026] |
The Company in Brief
PUBLIC
Autentic AI surfaced publicly in 2026 as a Barcelona-based startup focused on AI-led market research, with the company describing itself as an "AI Market Research" platform for consumer and expert insights [autentic.ai]. The public record available for this section is thin by design: the company website establishes category and positioning, while founder pages and broader press coverage sit outside the sourcing rules for this section.
The clearest milestone visible from permitted sources is the company's October 2026 pre-seed financing, which multiple outlets tied to further product development and expansion, although those details are covered more fully elsewhere in this report and are not repeated here without a qualifying company or registry source [autentic.ai]. Within the limits of website-based verification, the operative view is straightforward: Autentic AI is an early-stage Barcelona company building software to automate parts of the market research workflow [autentic.ai].
No legal entity name or state filing detail was confirmed in the allowed source set for this section, so the overview stops at the operating brand, headquarters, and product category [autentic.ai]. That leaves a common early-stage diligence gap: investors can verify incorporation details, founding date precision, and corporate structure directly from Spanish registry documents.
Unconfirmed -- This section relies primarily on the company website, with no corroborating Crunchbase or state filing evidence used here.
What They Have Built
MIXED
The product claim is straightforward enough to test against the limited public record: Autentic AI says it automates market research from participant interview through synthesis, with a particular emphasis on qualitative studies that usually move slowly through human fieldwork and analysis [Demòcrata, October 2026]. Press coverage describes a platform that can interview hundreds of consumers and experts simultaneously using AI, then produce findings on a compressed timeline relative to conventional projects [Tech.eu, October 2026]. The company website adds more granular feature language around proprietary recruitment, screening, video-first responses, and analysis, but those details remain company-authored and should be read as positioning rather than independently verified product proof [autentic.ai].
The more interesting point is not the existence of AI interview tooling, which is becoming a crowded surface, but where Autentic AI appears to place the workflow boundary. Public descriptions consistently suggest an end-to-end system, not a narrow transcription or summarization layer: sourcing respondents, conducting interviews, and turning responses into research outputs are all presented as part of one product motion [Demòcrata, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026]. One outlet also reports that the process combines AI-led interviews and data analysis with human interpretation, which, if accurate, would place the company closer to a hybrid research operation than to a pure software utility [TheSaaSNews].
Public evidence is thinner on the underlying technology than on the workflow promise. There are no verified public materials in the source set that detail model providers, data architecture, compliance posture, or evaluation methodology, and no public demo was captured in the research inputs. Claims that the system delivers decisions in 48 hours or runs more than 1,000 AI-led interviews per day appear in founder or employee LinkedIn descriptions rather than independent reporting, so they are better treated as unverified operating claims than as established technical benchmarks [LinkedIn, Retrieved 2026].
Single-source, plausible -- Core product scope is corroborated by Tech.eu and Demòcrata, while feature-level detail and performance claims rely partly on company materials and LinkedIn profiles.
Market Size and Demand
From the public record
The market matters now because Autentic AI is entering a large, established research budget pool at the same moment buyers are testing whether generative AI can compress slow, labor-intensive insight workflows without losing methodological trust [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026].
The public record does not provide a sourced TAM, SAM, or SOM for Autentic AI itself, and that absence is material. What is visible is category positioning: multiple publishers describe the company as an AI-led alternative to traditional market research workflows, and one article explicitly frames the competitive set against Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ [Cinco Días, October 2026]. That places the company inside the broader market-research and insights-services budget, with an adjacent overlap into software that automates participant recruitment, interviewing, transcription, and analysis [Demòcrata, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026].
Demand drivers are easier to verify than market size. Across the reporting, the recurring commercial promise is speed: Tech.eu says the platform uses AI to interview hundreds of consumers and experts simultaneously, with the goal of reducing research timelines from weeks or months to days [Tech.eu, October 2026]. Demòcrata similarly describes end-to-end automation of market studies, from interviewing to producing findings, and says fresh capital will support additional platform automation and participant-recruitment infrastructure [Demòcrata, October 2026]. In practice, that suggests the first budget opening is likely in projects where companies need fast directional insight and can tolerate a newer workflow if turnaround time is materially shorter.
Adjacent and substitute markets are also clear from the product shape. Autentic AI does not only touch classic custom research; it also overlaps with expert networks, customer-research platforms, survey software, user-research tooling, and outsourced insight agencies, because it combines participant sourcing, qualitative interviewing, and analysis into one flow according to public coverage [Demòcrata, October 2026] [TheSaaSNews]. That breadth is an opportunity if buyers want vendor consolidation, but it also means procurement may compare the product against a wider set of incumbents than the headline research firms alone.
Macro and regulatory forces cut both ways. On the supportive side, European companies have a visible incentive to use software that lowers the cost and cycle time of insight generation, particularly in a period when teams are under pressure to justify product and marketing decisions with evidence rather than intuition. On the constraining side, any platform handling consumer or expert interviews in Europe will face scrutiny around consent, data handling, and the acceptable use of AI in research operations, even though the reviewed sources do not detail Autentic AI's compliance posture [Tech.eu, October 2026] [autentic.ai]. For an early company in this category, adoption is likely to depend as much on methodological credibility and governance as on model performance.
| Market sizing lens | Public evidence | Relevance to Autentic AI |
|---|---|---|
| Core category | Positioned as AI-powered market research competing with Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ [Cinco Días, October 2026] | Anchors the company in established research and insights budgets |
| Workflow scope | End-to-end study automation, including interviewing consumers and specialists and producing findings [Demòcrata, October 2026] | Expands addressable spend beyond survey tools into services-like workflows |
| Speed-based demand signal | Simultaneous AI interviews with hundreds of consumers and experts, intended to reduce project timelines from weeks or months to days [Tech.eu, October 2026] | Suggests the wedge is cycle-time compression rather than a niche vertical dataset |
| Adjacency | Human interpretation remains part of the process, according to one report [TheSaaSNews] | Indicates overlap with research agencies and analyst-assisted platforms, not only pure software tools |
The table points to a broad but still loosely bounded opportunity: the company appears to be selling into existing insight budgets first, while trying to pull work away from both software point solutions and service-heavy research vendors. The missing piece in public sources is quantified category size, which means investors should treat market breadth as plausible rather than confirmed.
Single-source, plausible -- Based primarily on Tech.eu, Cinco Días, Demòcrata, and TheSaaSNews, with no third-party market-sizing report or quantified TAM/SAM/SOM in the reviewed public record.
Who Else Is Fighting for This
MIXED Autentic AI is positioning itself less as a general survey tool and more as a faster, AI-native alternative to legacy custom research providers such as Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ [Cinco Días, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026].
| Company | Positioning | Stage / Funding | Notable Differentiator | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Autentic AI | AI market research platform focused on consumer and expert interviews completed in days rather than traditional study timelines | Pre-seed, €1.5M announced October 2026 | Simultaneous AI-led interviews with consumers and experts, plus end-to-end study automation | [Tech.eu, October 2026]; [Forbes España, October 2026]; [Demòcrata, October 2026] |
| Kantar | Incumbent global market research provider referenced as a direct competitive benchmark in coverage | Public company stage not established in the supplied sources, omitted here | Established enterprise relationships and broad research-service footprint are implied by its use as an incumbent comparison point | [Cinco Días, October 2026] |
| Ipsos | Incumbent global market research provider referenced as a direct competitive benchmark in coverage | Public company stage not established in the supplied sources, omitted here | Established enterprise brand in market research is implied by press framing | [Cinco Días, October 2026] |
| NielsenIQ | Incumbent data and measurement provider referenced as a direct competitive benchmark in coverage | Ownership and funding status not established in the supplied sources, omitted here | Scale in measurement and analytics is implied by its inclusion among large incumbents | [Cinco Días, October 2026] |
The table points to a simple but important market structure. Autentic AI is entering through speed-sensitive custom research, where a buyer may accept a newer vendor if turnaround time drops from weeks or months to days [Tech.eu, October 2026]. Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ sit on the opposite side of that trade, with established brands, large delivery organizations, and procurement familiarity, even if the supplied reporting does not quantify those advantages directly [Cinco Días, October 2026].
The competitive map breaks into three layers. First are the incumbents, Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ, which matter because they already anchor many enterprise research budgets and can bundle insight work with broader measurement or consulting relationships [Cinco Días, October 2026]. Second are AI-native challengers, where Autentic AI appears to place itself, using simultaneous AI interviews and automated synthesis as the core wedge rather than fieldwork at human-team pace [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026]. Third are adjacent substitutes, namely internal product, user research, and strategy teams using general-purpose AI tools plus existing respondent panels; the supplied sources do not name those tools, but the substitute is real because Autentic AI's promise is partly workflow compression rather than access to a uniquely regulated channel.
Where the company appears strongest today is product positioning, not locked-in distribution. Public reporting consistently describes an end-to-end workflow that automates interviewing and production of findings, and that coherence matters because point solutions often fail when research teams still need to stitch recruiting, interviewing, analysis, and reporting together [Demòcrata, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026]. That edge is still perishable. The same sources show the company is early, recently funded, and still building participant-recruitment infrastructure, which suggests its advantage is based on execution speed and product design rather than a proprietary network or balance-sheet advantage that would be difficult for a larger rival to replicate [Forbes España, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026].
The main exposure is straightforward. Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ each have a clearer claim to enterprise trust, and Autentic AI has no named customers, deployments, or partner channels in the reviewed public evidence to offset that gap [Cinco Días, October 2026]. If large buyers treat AI-led interviewing as a feature they can request from an incumbent rather than a reason to change vendors, then Autentic AI risks competing on speed inside a procurement process it does not yet control.
The most plausible 18-month scenario is a bifurcation rather than a winner-take-all shift. Autentic AI is the winner if buyers increasingly carve out fast-turn concept testing, exploratory consumer work, and expert interviews into a separate budget line where turnaround time matters more than incumbent process comfort [Tech.eu, October 2026]. The loser if that does not happen is Autentic AI itself, because Kantar is the named competitor best positioned to absorb AI-enabled workflow changes inside existing enterprise accounts, while a startup without disclosed customer references would have less room to rely on brand or installed relationships [Cinco Días, October 2026].
Single-source, plausible -- Competitive set is confirmed in named press coverage, but comparative positioning outside Autentic AI relies partly on press framing rather than fully corroborated company-by-company source material.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
The prize here is straightforward: if Autentic AI can turn qualitative market research from a bespoke services workflow into repeatable software, it has a path to become a high-velocity research layer that budgets could shift toward well beyond Spain [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026].
The headline opportunity is not that Autentic AI merely runs studies faster, but that it could recast who gets to commission primary research and how often they do it. Public reporting describes a platform that uses AI to interview consumers and experts simultaneously and automate market studies end to end, from fieldwork through findings [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026]. If that workflow proves reliable, the company is selling into an old friction point in research: traditional studies are slow, labor-intensive, and often reserved for higher-stakes decisions because cycle time is measured in weeks or months rather than days [Tech.eu, October 2026]. The reason this looks reachable rather than purely aspirational is that investors have already financed the thesis at the pre-seed stage, and the initial product positioning is specific enough to map to a real incumbent category, with Kantar, Ipsos, and NielsenIQ named in coverage as the reference set [Forbes España, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026].
The upside branches into a small number of plausible paths, each tied to a different way software could absorb spend that has historically sat with agencies or panels.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-first tracker for product and brand teams | Autentic AI becomes the default tool for recurring qualitative research, replacing a portion of agency-led concept testing, user interviews, and message validation with faster always-on studies. | A repeatable workflow that reliably compresses research delivery from weeks to days, making research frequent rather than episodic [Tech.eu, October 2026]. | The company is explicitly positioned around simultaneous AI interviews and end-to-end automation, which maps to recurring internal research use cases rather than one-off consulting projects [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Demòcrata, October 2026]. |
| Recruitment plus insight stack | The company couples its own participant-recruitment infrastructure with interview and analysis software, creating a fuller operating system for primary research. | Successful build-out of internal participant-recruitment infrastructure using the October 2026 financing [Demòcrata, October 2026]. | Coverage says part of the new capital will support stronger infrastructure for recruiting research participants, which suggests management sees supply access as core to product defensibility rather than an outsourced input [Demòcrata, October 2026]. |
| European challenger in AI-native research | Autentic AI expands from a Barcelona launch point into a broader European software vendor for research teams that want a faster alternative to large incumbent providers. | The pre-seed round from Baobab Ventures, Lanai Ventures, Acurio Ventures, and Masia VC funds platform development and expansion [Forbes España, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026]. | The company already frames itself against multinational incumbents, and the investor syndicate gives it early backing to test whether an AI-native offer can travel beyond local services relationships [Cinco Días, October 2026] [Forbes España, October 2026]. |
What compounding looks like is a supply-and-software flywheel rather than a classic social network effect. If Autentic AI can improve participant recruitment, screening, interview execution, and synthesis inside one product, each completed study can sharpen the workflow for the next one and make the platform more attractive for repeat demand [Demòcrata, October 2026] [Autentic AI]. Company materials describe proprietary recruitment, screening, video-first responses, and analysis as part of the stack, though those claims remain company-sourced and should be treated cautiously [Autentic AI]. Even so, the strategic logic is clear: better access to relevant respondents should improve study quality and turnaround, which should in turn support more frequent usage and a stronger data base for refining prompts, interview structures, and analysis templates [Demòcrata, October 2026] [Tech.eu, October 2026].
The size of the win is easiest to frame through public incumbents rather than a hard market model, because no confirmed TAM figure is available in the sourced material. Ipsos reported revenue of €2.44 billion for 2025, which is a useful reminder that research remains a large global budget pool even before adjusting for adjacent analytics spend [Ipsos, February 2026]. NielsenIQ and GfK completed their merger in 2023 to create a larger global consumer intelligence platform, underscoring strategic value in scaled research infrastructure [NielsenIQ, July 2023]. On that backdrop, if Autentic AI were to become a meaningful software-first alternative for a slice of recurring qualitative research across Europe, a venture-scale outcome in the high hundreds of millions of euros is conceivable (scenario, not a forecast), particularly if the company proves that AI can move research from episodic project work into continuous operating cadence [Tech.eu, October 2026] [Cinco Días, October 2026].
Single-source, plausible -- Core company, product, and funding facts are corroborated by Forbes España, Tech.eu, Cinco Días, and Demòcrata. The compounding mechanism relies partly on company-sourced product claims from Autentic AI, and the upside framing uses external public comparables rather than company-specific financial disclosure.
Sources
From the public record
[Tech.eu, October 2026] Spanish Autentic AI raises €1.5M to accelerate AI-powered market research | https://tech.eu/2026/10/09/spanish-autentic-ai-raises-eur15m-to-accelerate-ai-powered-market-research/
[Demòcrata, October 2026] Autentic AI raises 1.5 million in a pre-seed round. | https://www.democrata.es/en/economy/autentic-ai-raises-1-5-million-in-a-pre-seed-round-with-baobab-lanai-acurio-and-masia/
[Forbes España, October 2026] Autentic AI cierra una ronda de 1,5 millones con Carles Reina (Baobab), Lanai, Acurio y Masia. | https://forbes.es/ultima-hora/1041035/autentic-ai-cierra-una-ronda-de-15-millones-con-carles-reina-baobab-lanai-acurio-y-masia/
[Cinco Días, October 2026] Autentic AI cierra una ronda de 1,5 millones para su IA de estudios de mercado y competir con Kantar, Ipsos o NielsenIQ. | https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2026-10-09/autentic-ai-cierra-una-ronda-de-15-millones-para-su-ia-de-estudios-de-mercado-y-competir-con-kantar-ipsos-o-nielseniq.html
[autentic.ai] Autentic AI | AI Market Research for Consumer and Expert Insights | https://www.autentic.ai/
[TheSaaSNews] Autentic AI Raises €1.5M Pre-seed | https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/autentic-ai-raises-1-5m-pre-seed/
[LinkedIn, Retrieved 2026] Aniol Carreras - Autentic AI | LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniolcarreras/
[Ipsos, February 2026] Full-Year 2025 Revenue | https://www.ipsos.com/en/full-year-2025-revenue
[NielsenIQ, July 2023] NIQ and GfK complete merger | https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/2023/niq-and-gfk-complete-merger/
Articles about Autentic AI
- Autentic AI's AI Agents Target 400,000 Market Research Interviews This Year — The Barcelona startup's pre-seed round, led by Baobab Ventures, backs a bet that AI agents can replace weeks of manual qualitative research.