Intriguingly, Microsoft’s AI research head reveals an innovation that could revolutionize how you understand your users. If you’ve ever struggled with slow, costly market research that barely scratches the surface, this breakthrough AI tool shatters those barriers—turning weeks of work into just one day. Imagine unlocking unprecedented user honesty and insights at lightning speed, giving your team the edge you’ve been seeking. Ready to discover how AI is reshaping customer research and why industry leaders can’t look back?
Nestlé and Microsoft Trust This AI—But Are You Ready to Replace Your Market Research?
If you’re stuck in endless, costly customer interviews that drain time and budget, this might disrupt everything you thought you knew about market research. Outset, backed by Nestlé, Microsoft, and a $17M Series A, is flipping the script on traditional research with AI-moderated video interviews—conducting 10x more interviews in a fraction of the time and cost.
How can a 14-person startup save enterprise giants millions and speed up insights delivery from weeks to days? The secret’s in AI agents that dive deeper, faster, and at scale—capturing real customer emotions without tiring human moderators.
Curious how AI is transforming the way the biggest brands understand their users and why investors are betting on a $140B opportunity? This could be the edge your business needs to leave outdated research in the dust.
Transforming Speed and Efficiency
Microsoft’s Head of Research praises Outset’s AI platform for turning projects that once took three weeks into just 24 hours. If you’re striving to unlock faster, deeper customer insights without draining your team’s time, this breakthrough could change your workflow entirely. Imagine scaling from 25 manual interviews across weeks to 250 AI-moderated conversations in under a week—empowering your team to move at unprecedented speed and outpace competitors who are still stuck in the slow lane.
Cost Advantages Over Traditional Methods
With Nestlé achieving an 81% cost reduction using Outset, you can see how AI-moderated research drastically slashes expenses compared to traditional studies. If you’ve faced prohibitive costs limiting your market research scope, this tech lets you reach ten times more participants for a fraction of the price—giving you the freedom to broaden your understanding without breaking your budget.
Traditional market research demands weeks of manual interviews and costly analysis, often costing thousands per participant. Outset’s AI platform breaks this pattern by conducting hundreds of interviews quickly and automatically synthesizing results, reducing costs by up to 81% while delivering insights eight times faster. By cutting those financial and time barriers, you gain the agility to run more comprehensive studies, test new concepts rapidly, and respond to your customers’ evolving needs with confidence—unlocking strategic advantages usually reserved for industry giants.
Case Study: Nestlé’s New Product Development
Nestlé, a global food powerhouse behind over 2,000 brands, transformed its product testing by using AI-driven interviews that cut research time from weeks to days. Imagine understanding your customers’ reactions to price, ingredients, and packaging within 48 hours, instead of waiting forever. This rapid insight lets you innovate faster and reduce costs by 81%, giving you a serious edge in the competitive food market.
Microsoft’s Accelerated User Experience Research
Microsoft’s AI team partnered with Outset to supercharge user feedback, turning months of UX research into just 24 hours. If you’re struggling to keep pace with evolving user needs, this game-changing approach could elevate how you capture authentic insights—at a fraction of the usual time and cost.
Going deeper, Microsoft taps Outset’s AI moderators to engage users with seamless video and voice interviews that reveal genuine experiences with AI products. As their Head of Research, Jess Holbrook, highlights, this tool isn’t just faster—it unlocks a scale and depth of understanding that manual methods miss. By embracing this AI-powered lens, you gain real-time analytics and broader reach, empowering your team to make smarter, faster decisions that resonate with your audience.
Venture Capital’s $140 Billion Opportunity
Microsoft’s AI research leader isn’t the only one buzzing—venture capitalists see a $140 billion market in AI-powered research tools like Outset. If you’re grappling with slow, costly market research, this massive shift means your strategies could soon transform overnight. With early adopters snapping up solutions that deliver faster insights at a fraction of the cost, the pressure’s on to catch up. After all, missing out on this AI-driven wave could leave your business trailing competitors already tapping into smarter, scalable research.
Factors Fueling Investment in AI Technologies
If you think AI is just hype, think again—leading investors like 8VC are backing platforms that replace manual research with intelligent automation, opening doors for businesses hungry to save time and money. These AI tools don’t just speed things up; they multiply your reach and deepen understanding at scale. What’s driving this frenzy? Consider:
- Large, unsatisfied market demand for efficient research solutions
- Lack of clear market leaders springing from early-stage innovation
- Long-term durability powered by technical evolution and data advantage
- Exceptional teams with real customer insights and product vision
After weighing these, it becomes clear why investors are racing to back AI as the next wave of enterprise transformation—and why you should too.
Digging deeper into what’s propelling this surge, you’ll find that AI research tools align perfectly with your needs for speed, scale, and deeper insights. Unlike traditional approaches stuck in slow cycles and manual grunt work, AI platforms synthesize massive data seamlessly, giving you a competitive edge. The shortage of dominant players means you’re exploring a rapidly evolving arena with room to pioneer new methods. Plus, top-tier teams designing these technologies ensure sustained innovation, turning AI research into your strategic advantage rather than a fleeting trend.
- Strong inbound interest from enterprises frustrated with legacy methods
- Technical breakthroughs enabling robust, scalable AI moderators
- Data accumulation creating competitive moats that grow with usage
- Visionary founders deeply connected to end-user challenges
After understanding these drivers, you can see why embracing AI now isn’t just smart—it’s inevitable.
From Startup to Major Player in Months
Microsoft’s Head of Research, Jess Holbrook, is witnessing something extraordinary: users opening up like never before with Outset’s AI research platform. Imagine turning months of market research into just 24 hours while scaling interviews tenfold. You’re watching a once-small startup with only 14 employees transform into a powerhouse with millions in recurring revenue and over 50 enterprise clients, doubling revenue in just four months. This rapid rise signals a rare opportunity—you could be part of a game-changing shift in how user insights are uncovered and leveraged, faster and deeper than you thought possible.
Adapting to Changing Attitudes Toward AI
If you’ve hesitated to adopt AI tools due to uncertainty or inertia, you’re not alone—until recently. Outset’s CEO Aaron Cannon reveals how, in just six months, the resistance to AI research has vaporized as enterprises embrace its unmatched speed and scale. You’re entering a moment when AI moves from novelty to necessity, reshaping how your team captures authentic customer insights with fewer hours and massive cost savings.
For you, this shift means harnessing AI to accelerate your user research without sacrificing depth or quality. Companies once stuck in conventional surveys are pivoting quickly—driven by tangible results like 81% cost reductions and 10x reach expansion. As Outset’s AI agents chat naturally across languages and time zones, you gain unprecedented access to global perspectives that deepen your understanding of customers. Embracing this new AI landscape empowers you to lead innovation, outpace competitors, and make smarter product decisions faster than ever before.
Rivals Stuck in Traditional Research Paradigms
Microsoft’s AI research lead isn’t alone in pushing the boundaries—yet many giants like Qualtrics and UserTesting remain trapped in outdated methods. If you’re relying on static surveys and basic sentiment analysis, you’re missing the game-changing speed and depth AI moderation offers. While your competitors scramble with slow, costly research, AI-powered platforms like Outset cut timelines from weeks to days and multiply your reach tenfold. You might wonder how long you can afford to lag behind when innovation is racing ahead at this pace.
Advantages of AI-Moderated Research Solutions
Microsoft trusts Outset’s AI moderation to unlock user insights faster and deeper than ever before—and you can too. Imagine accelerating your research eight times faster, slashing costs by 81%, and scaling up to 250 interviews in under a week. With the ability to gather video, voice, text, and screen-sharing data effortlessly, you get richer, more actionable results that traditional methods can’t match. If you want to see what your customers truly think before your competitors do, embracing AI is no longer optional—it’s necessary.
Beyond speed and cost savings, AI-moderated research empowers you to conduct larger-scale studies without a proportional increase in effort or expense. By leveraging synthesized voices and multimedia prompts, you engage participants on their terms, leading to higher quality and more authentic responses. You won’t just gather data; you’ll gain nuanced understanding that helps refine your products, marketing, and user experiences. This next-level flexibility also means your research can run continuously, adapting dynamically and delivering deeper insights faster than any human team could manage.
Summing up
Considering all points, when a Microsoft AI expert claims, “I’ve never seen users open up like this,” it’s clear you’re witnessing a breakthrough that could transform your research process. If you’ve struggled with slow, expensive projects that fail to capture real user insights, this AI tool shatters that barrier—turning weeks of work into just 24 hours. Imagine the edge you’d gain by accessing deep, authentic user feedback faster than anyone else. You don’t want to miss how this innovation is redefining user experience research and accelerating decision-making for leading companies.