Autentic AI closes €1.5M pre-seed round to automate market research with AI-led interviews

Autentic AI has closed a €1.5 million pre-seed round, with participation from Baobab Ventures, Lanai Ventures, Acurio Ventures and Masia VC. The company was founded by Dani Diestre, Aniol Carreras and Jacob Bamio. This is the entirety of the currently confirmable funding facts—the report did not disclose the valuation, specific terms, or the investment amounts and roles of each participating party.

What really gives this funding narrative tension is the comparison it offers: co-founder and co-CEO Dani Diestre says traditional research is highly labor-dependent, typically taking about 12 weeks and costing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of euros; while Autentic's platform claims it can deliver results in days. To be clear, the 12 weeks and the cost range are the founder's account, not industry statistics; and "delivery in days" comes with no specific customer case or comparison data.

According to the report, the platform uses AI to interview hundreds of verified and paid consumers and experts simultaneously. AI handles analyzing large volumes of conversations to identify patterns, while the human team provides judgment and methodological rigor. Diestre says Autentic combines AI with human expertise and always keeps one research professional involved.

This division of labor is key to understanding its positioning: it does not claim to replace researchers with AI, but rather assigns interviews and preliminary pattern recognition to machines, leaving methodology and judgment to humans. However, the report does not disclose the specific mechanism or ratio behind "always keeps one research professional involved," so this commitment can currently only be understood as the company's own account.

The report says the platform currently conducts 1,000 interviews per day, with a target of more than 400,000 cumulative interviews by the end of 2026. These two numbers are the most easily misread parts of the entire article: the former is the company's self-reported current operating volume, the latter is a future target, and neither is audited data.

More noteworthy is the question of definition. The report does not specify whether the 400,000 is a cumulative total or an annual total, nor does it specify the starting point and duration of the 1,000-per-day statistic. Based on the available information, it is impossible to determine what growth curve would be needed to go from 1,000 per day to 400,000, nor to verify whether the target can be achieved.

The funding will be used to accelerate platform development to further automate the research process and to build the company's own recruitment infrastructure. This is one of the few statements in the report about the use of funds that belongs to the confirmed-fact level.

Putting "proprietary recruitment infrastructure" together with "interviewing hundreds of verified and paid respondents simultaneously," one can infer (this is an inference): the stability of respondent supply and the cost of verification may be one of the main bottlenecks when such platforms scale. But the report does not disclose the allocation proportions of the funding, nor the current size of the proprietary recruitment pool.

The report says its business covers consumer goods, retail, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, as well as strategic consulting and private equity. What these industries share is a need for frequent, rapid external input before decisions, which aligns with the "delivery in days" selling point.

But the report gives no specific customer names, contract sizes, or repeat-purchase situations. Therefore, "covering these sectors" can currently only be understood as the company's self-described business scope, not a verified revenue structure.

Carles Reina of Baobab Ventures says Autentic makes frequent research affordable for all companies; Guillermo Llibre of Lanai VC and Kate Cornell of Acurio Ventures emphasize its speed, cost advantages and team. These are assessments from the investors' standpoint, typical of funding announcement rhetoric.

What they can show is: the investors are willing to bet on the "speed + cost" narrative. What they cannot show is: the comparability and accuracy of AI interview results versus traditional research results. The report provides no independent verification and no comparison data.

All of the above information comes from a report by The AI Insider, which is press-release in nature and provides no independent third-party verification. This means that the funding amount, participating parties, founders, and use of funds belong to the confirmed-fact level, yet their sole source remains this report itself; while interview volume, delivery speed, industry coverage, and target numbers belong to the company's own account.

In addition, the report does not state whether the €1.5 million has actually been received or what the closing conditions are. In the absence of a second source, readers should treat the operating numbers in this article as "company claims," not "verified."