Listen Labs, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to conduct customer interviews at scale, has raised $69 million in Series B funding. The round led by Ribbit Capital values the company at $500 million and brings total capital raised to $100 million.

The investment signals growing confidence in AI-driven market research, an industry that has long relied on slow, expensive human interviews or quantitative surveys that often produce misleading data. Listen Labs says its platform can deliver actionable customer insights in hours instead of weeks.

The Problem With Surveys

Traditional market research suffers from two main flaws. Surveys offer statistical precision but miss nuance and encourage dishonest answers. One-on-one human interviews provide depth but cannot scale. Listen Labs positions its AI moderator as a middle ground that combines depth with speed.

The platform works by recruiting participants from a global network of 30 million people. An AI moderator conducts open-ended video conversations, asking follow-up questions and verifying identity. Results are packaged into reports with key themes and highlight reels.

CEO Alfred Wahlforss said surveys give false precision because people guess what to answer. Open-ended video responses generate more honesty, he said. The company reports that participants talk three times longer and share more honestly on sensitive topics.

Fraud Detection as a Feature

A major challenge in market research is fraud. Participants often lie about their backgrounds to qualify for paid studies. Listen Labs built a quality guard that cross-references LinkedIn profiles with video responses and checks for consistency across answers.

Emeritus, an online education company, reported that about 20 percent of its survey responses were fraudulent or low quality before using Listen. After switching, that number dropped to nearly zero. The fraud detection system has become a key selling point for the platform.

Wahlforss said some large companies sent participants who claimed to be enterprise buyers but were immediately flagged as fraud. The system has allowed Listen to maintain data quality at scale.

Why This Matters

The $140 billion market research industry is ripe for disruption. Companies like Microsoft, Sweetgreen and Chubbies have already used Listen Labs to inform product decisions. Microsoft reported cutting research time from four to six weeks down to days or hours.

Faster, more honest customer insights could change how companies build products and market them. Instead of relying on outdated surveys, teams can inject real customer feedback into every decision. This shift benefits both businesses and consumers who want products that better meet their needs.

Investors are betting that AI will transform market research the way it has transformed coding, customer support and content creation. Listen Labs is one of the first companies to scale this approach beyond simple chatbots into deep, qualitative interviews.

The funding will help Listen Labs expand its engineering team and refine its AI moderator. The company has grown annualized revenue 15 times since launch nine months ago and has conducted over one million AI-powered interviews.