AI Research Platform Outset Secures $17m Funding

In San Francisco, AI-moderated research platform Outset has announced a $17m Series A round, which it will use to expand its team and accelerate product expansion.

The round brings Outset's total funding to date to $21m, and was led by 8VC, with participation from new investor Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company and existing investors Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures, Rebel Fund, Genius Ventures, Ritual Capital and Alt Capital.

Outset's platform is pitched at Fortune 500 enterprises looking for rapid but deep qual research. The platform uses AI to conduct and report on video interviews, promising the scale and speed of a survey with the depth of a one-to-one interview. Users can input guides, concepts, ads and designs, and select respondents either from Outset's set of panel integrations or their own user bases. A 'robust enterprise toolkit' enhances this core functionality with sophisticated analytics tools, security certifications and admin permissioning, workspaces and interviewer customization.

Outset says it has grown nearly 20 percent month over month for the last year. The firm was founded by research and product developer Aaron Cannon and firefighter-turned-engineer Michael Hess. CEO Cannon comments: 'We designed AI agents to do what we couldn't - talk to thousands of people at speed, scale and depth... In 2025, we'll be expanding more deeply into design and customer experience research to empower organizations with more and more powerful agents.

'By deploying AI to talk to thousands of people around the world in any language and in any time zone, our customers are dramatically reducing the barriers to deeply understanding what users really want and need, infusing their products, services and experiences with more humanity.'

Web site: www.outset.ai .