The Insights AI Brief - April 2026
Key Takeaways
If you only have a minute, here are the key takeaways:
For an industry that has historically attracted little venture funding, the money moving toward AI-first market research tools is notable.
Half of market research professionals say they use AI regularly. Only one in ten say it's fully embedded in their workflows, according to the Market Research Institute International.
SurveyMonkey is now inside Claude, which means survey-building is embedded directly in a general-purpose large language model (LLM).
What's New
Ideally (April 20) — Raised $10 million in Series A funding and launched Ideally Canvas in the U.S., an AI-powered creative insights product gathering consumer responses overnight across 30+ countries.
NIQ (April 23–30) — Launched Commerce Lab (April 23) and Precision Solutions (April 29), then announced a strategic data-sharing collaboration with Ulta Beauty (April 30). Beauty specialty retailers like Sephora have historically sat outside NIQ's measurement ecosystem. Ulta joining is a sign that's starting to change.
Market Research Institute International (MRII) (April 28) — Released its 2026 State of the Market Research Industry report, a global survey of nearly 500 market research and insights professionals.
SurveyMonkey (May 4) — Launched a Claude connector built on Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), embedding its survey platform directly inside Claude. Build surveys, edit questions, generate links, and pull response summaries without leaving your workflow.
Why It Matters
I attended Quirks Chicago in April 2025 looking for an answer to a question I think a lot of us are asking: how do I actually use AI in my research workflow? I left mostly underwhelmed.
The exception was Listen Labs. I was still finding my footing at the conference when the co-founder — a Swede named Alfred Wahlforss — spotted the tattoo on my left wrist: lagom. Just the right amount, not too much, not too little. We ended up talking for a while, and I left the conversation genuinely impressed.
A year later, I'm still looking for my lagom. And it seems, so is the rest of the industry.
Money Moving Into AI-Native Research Tools
Since then, Listen Labs has raised a $27M Series A and a $69M Series B. Aaru, a synthetic research startup, raised at a $1B headline valuation in December 2025. Now, Ideally has closed a $10M Series A and launched in the U.S.
For an industry that has historically attracted little venture funding, the money moving toward AI-first market research tools is notable. And the demand is there as researchers are still looking for the right tool.
The MRII Report: Experimentation is Not Adoption
MRII published their 2026 State of Market Research Industry report and about half of professionals say they use AI regularly. Only one in ten say it's fully embedded in their workflows.
One finding I didn't expect: 40% of respondents are comfortable having future research rely on 51% or more synthetic responses. That number is higher than I would have guessed, and it connects directly to where investor money is going.
Experimentation is not adoption. We've been saying AI is changing market research for two years. The MRII data suggests we're still figuring it out.
SurveyMonkey x Claude: Why This One is Different
SurveyMonkey's Claude connector is one attempt at an answer. Most AI tools in market research are vendor-specific. To use them, you have to be in their ecosystem. This one meets you in an LLM you may already be using, connected directly to a survey platform. You still need a SurveyMonkey account, but all research from survey development to analysis can be done through Claude.
Why use five platforms when one can do itall ? There are still real caveats — data security, breadth of features, and methodology matter. Whether it's the right fit depends entirely on your workflow.
I'm testing this by running it through a full research project, brief to final report, with a mock client. Follow along here.
I don't know yet whether any of this will close the adoption gap the MRII data is pointing to. But here I am, a year later, writing a newsletter about AI in market research — because I still haven't found lagom.