A startup wants companies to stop asking real people what they think, and ask fake ones instead. Simile has raised $200m at a $2bn valuation to build “agentic twins,” AI stand-ins for real consumers that firms can survey by the million.
Greenoaks led the round, the New York Times reported, with Index Ventures and others returning. It is a fast turn. The year-old startup raised $100m less than six months ago.
Surveying people who do not exist
Simile’s pitch is that it can predict how people will behave by simulating them. Companies use it to test a new product or gauge how a brand lands, faster and cheaper than a traditional market-research study.
The customers are real even if the respondents are not. Last autumn, CVS Health used 400,000 agentic twins to work out how to get patients to take their medicine. Deloitte and the finance app Wealthfront are clients too.
