Market research is a $90 billion industry that helps brands figure out how to best present themselves to potential customers. But that market insight isn’t cheap or quick. Cashew Research wants to use AI to change this.
Cashew, based in Calgary, Alberta, uses AI to develop market research plans and surveys for brands based on the information they are looking for, such as their visibility with specific populations or whether their marketing taglines resonate with customers. Cashew then sends surveys to real people and uses AI to summarize and summarize the results.
Cashew was one of 200 startups selected for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition in 2025 and won TechCrunch Disrupt’s Enterprise Stage pitch competition.
“You can use an LLM to do deep research and get answers to your questions, or you can use a very expensive firm,” Cashew co-founder and CEO Addy Graves told TechCrunch about the current market research industry. “Right now, Cashew exists in the middle. Instead of using LLM to surface the same recycled pool of data that everyone finds on the internet, we create custom, fresh data to answer your questions.”
Graves has over 10 years of market research experience. Cashew’s initial idea was sparked by a problem she frequently encounters. The client wanted a complete research project using real-world human data to be completed within a few days.
Graves said it had been impossible for years to shorten that timeline while still producing the same quality of research results because the technology to speed up the process wasn’t yet ready.
“That was definitely a aha moment,” Graves said. “And it’s only since the advent of AI that we’ve been able to really automate these processes that we use as researchers, the best practices, the data science-backed methodologies, and the report formats that we know everyone wants.”
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Graves added that bringing automation to the process also reduces costs, making Cashew an option for small and medium-sized brands that can’t afford to work with traditional market research companies.
Graves founded Cashew in 2023 with chief operating officer Rose Wong, initially focusing on consumer packaged goods, particularly food and beverages.
Graves said he thinks Cashew can stand out in the increasingly crowded category of AI marketing tools because it’s not fully automated. Each of Cashew’s clients obtains up-to-date human data for each project, which requires market research expertise, Graves said.
Cashew’s competitive advantage is likely to increase further as the company matures. The company takes all the real-world data collected from client projects, anonymizes it, and stores it in a database. This will also help you add your own data to future research projects.
The company has raised C$1.5 million in pre-seed funding and is preparing to launch a seed round in early 2026, where it expects to raise up to $5 million, Graves said. The capital will be used to continue technological development of the product.
Graves said the company’s two main areas of focus for next year are growing its presence in the U.S. and working to build its B2B business.
“People who are already buying research, which is already a large category, but this doesn’t include all the people who could be buying research but can’t buy it now because they simply can’t afford it or don’t have a timeline,” Graves said. “In fact, we’re creating this new category to give marketers access to answers to these questions they’ve always had.”
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