Traditional qualitative research has a scaling problem: companies want the “why” behind customer behavior, but interviewing enough people can take weeks and require large agency budgets.
Barcelona-based Autentic AI has raised €1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Baobab Ventures, Lanai Ventures, Acurio Ventures and Masia VC to attack that bottleneck with AI. The company plans to use the capital to automate more of the research workflow and build its own network of verified consumers and industry experts.
Founded by Dani Diestre, Aniol Carreras and Jacob Bamio, Autentic runs AI-moderated interviews with consumers and experts in parallel, then analyzes the conversations for recurring themes, sentiment, quotations and decision-ready findings. Human researchers remain involved in interpreting the results rather than handing clients an entirely automated conclusion.
The platform covers the research cycle from study design and participant recruitment to interviewing, analysis and delivery. Autentic says it can interview hundreds of participants simultaneously across 40+ languages, while individual findings can be traced back to verbatim responses and video evidence. Its use cases range from concept and product testing to pricing, brand tracking, competitive intelligence and pre-deal diligence.
The company says it is already running around 1,000 interviews per day and is targeting more than 400,000 completed interviews by the end of 2026. That remains a company target rather than an achieved annual figure.
The more interesting part of the round may be Autentic’s decision to invest in a proprietary participant network. AI can make interviewing and synthesis cheaper to scale, but weak recruitment can still undermine the research itself. Owning more of the participant layer could give Autentic greater control over identity, relevance and research quality while reducing dependence on external panels.
That creates the next test for Autentic: whether faster AI-led interviewing can preserve the credibility and depth businesses expect from qualitative research as study volume rises.
