Voice AI startup Keplar just secured $3.2 million in seed funding from Kleiner Perkins to automate market research that traditionally takes weeks and costs thousands. The two-year-old company's AI conducts customer interviews so naturally that participants forget they're talking to a bot, potentially disrupting a multi-billion dollar industry dominated by human researchers.
Keplar is betting that conversational AI has finally gotten good enough to replace one of corporate America's oldest traditions - hiring expensive consultants to figure out what customers actually think. The startup's $3.2 million seed round, announced Wednesday and led by Kleiner Perkins, validates a bold premise: voice bots can now conduct market research interviews so convincingly that participants forget they're talking to artificial intelligence.
The funding comes at a pivotal moment for the market research industry, where Fortune 500 companies routinely spend tens of thousands of dollars and wait weeks for insights that Keplar claims to deliver in minutes. Traditional research firms have dominated this space for decades, but advances in large language models are creating an opening for AI-first competitors.
"These conversations feel really real," founder Dhruv Guliani told TechCrunch. "When you play everything back, you can even hear participants address the AI moderator by name: Ellie, Andrew or Ryan." Guliani, a former Google engineer who worked on speech and voice AI models, co-founded the company in 2023 with machine learning engineer William Wen during a South Park Commons fellowship.
The platform works by transforming any product question into an interview guide, then deploying AI voice assistants to conduct probing conversations with customers. If granted CRM access, Keplar's bots reach out directly to existing customers, asking follow-up questions and digging deeper into responses the way human researchers would. The results get packaged into familiar PowerPoint presentations and executive reports.
Early traction suggests the approach resonates with enterprise clients. Clorox and Intercom are already using Keplar's platform, representing validation from both consumer goods and B2B software sectors. The startup's ability to land recognizable brand names this early indicates potential demand for AI-powered research tools.
But Keplar isn't pioneering this space alone. The market for AI-driven customer research is heating up rapidly, with well-funded competitors already establishing themselves. Outset raised a $17 million Series A led by 8VC in June, while Listen Labs secured $27 million from in April. These larger funding rounds suggest investors see significant opportunity in automating market research.