Bolt Insight, the London-based market research company helping brands unlock consumer insights through AI-moderated research, has closed its £7m funding round led by Pembroke VCT with participation from 212, Active Partners, Velocity and TIBAS Ventures.
The new funding will help to scale its BoltChatAI tool globally, in addition to funding the company’s next ambition to create an ‘assistant AI chief insights officer’ – a real-time intelligence partner that acts as a decision-making platform for brands.
The AI-powered system will be able to instantly answer business questions by tapping into a company’s historical research and market data, as well as autonomously engage real consumers through new AI-moderated interviews and deliver actionable insights.
Bolt Insight believes this will change the way insights are sourced, moving from passive, project-based research to an always-on, proactive intelligence hub embedded in business decision-making.
Bolt Insight is led by CEO and co-founder Hakan Yurdakul, who spent 14 years at Unilever in brand strategy and transformation, and CTO and co-founder Kerem Turgay, a Harvard and ETH Zurich-trained engineer with experience at Siemens, Coca-Cola and Afiniti.
“With the launch of BoltChatAI in 2022, we proved that AI-moderated qualitative research could deliver rich insight at unprecedented speed and scale,” says Yurdakul.
“Today, we’re building on that foundation with a bold new ambition, to create the assistant AI chief insights officer. This new investment will power the next phase of that journey.”
The investment will also help Bolt Insight strengthen its position in a global insights market valued at around £115B.
“Bolt Insight is a brilliant example of how AI can lead change in an established industry by putting real consumer voices at the heart of decision-making,” adds Andrew Wolfson, CEO at Pembroke Investment Managers. “As demand for real-time intelligence continues to grow, Bolt is perfectly positioned to lead a new generation of consumer understanding.”