When Consumer Behavior Moves Faster Than Your Business Model

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy The Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

 

AI is reshaping the insights industry faster than anyone expected. This week: a wave of well-funded analytics startups, infrastructure plays that signal where the real value is moving, and consumer behavior shifts that are forcing legacy players to adapt or risk irrelevance.

Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy break down why today's M&A looks nothing like past cycles, what happens when vendors lean too hard on AI messaging, and which product launches actually matter.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

Use code EXCHANGE to get a 15% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

IIEX Europe

IIEX West 

IIEX.AI 

Stay Ahead of the Curve! Subscribe to The Exchange Newsletter on LinkedIn Today! 

Transcript

Lenny Murphy: And there we go. Happy Friday.

Karen Lynch: Right up to the line.

Lenny Murphy: You're crazy this week, right? You're so busy. And then we're trying to do this with a crazy week of content. So I'm surprised you're even here.

Karen Lynch: It's just, you know, what's funny is it's just the days don't end really. They don't really begin and end in a normal way. You know, I'm just sitting with my laptop, but you know, I wake up and I bring my laptop down downstairs to have coffee at 6 a.m. Because I'm dealing with whatever might have happened overnight. And then, you know, have dinner and have my laptop downstairs watching the Mets game for better or worse. And, you know, I just am working on my laptop downstairs instead of in my office because it's just there's just stuff and we have to be responsive because we don't have time to let it wait till the next day.

Karen Lynch: That's right.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. And this is busy. I was actually thinking earlier and it's relevant to as we get to The Exchange in our conversation earlier on Slack. Yeah, you know the signals? We started this to separate the signal from the noise. Yeah, well, I know. I'm not sure if that's nice. If I was like, I don't think that it is very noisy right now, but it's a really loud , increasing signal. Yeah, there’s so much signal, you know. Then, I mean it was so we could argue about the quality of the signal, care that much. But there's just, it's just increasing, like the amplitude is magnifying. And while we're also you're trying to manage the biggest event of the year.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, well, there's definitely that. But to your point, I think you and I, I think we have clarity. I think you and I hear things pretty clearly amidst the noise. And that's what it's like, for us, I don't really feel like it's confusing. Like, I think we're, I think we're pretty clear on things. And that is on some level unnerving, because we're like, there's just so much evidence. Like, I hate to really say that. But I feel a lot of clarity where I don't think we had that two years ago when we were feeling we're still feeling disrupted, friends. Don't get me wrong. We still feel the disruption that everybody's feeling. But I think we understand it, and we see what's happening with very clear vision. And I think that's very different from where even you and I were even six months ago. At least that's how I see it for now.

Lenny Murphy: No, I think you're right. And that's for our audience. By the way, obviously, we've been going up time. Karen, I made a decision this morning. After I x, all the craziness, we're going to think through how, how's a way? Because again, lots of signals, lots of evidence. And we've been kind of operating from the assumption of what we want to communicate all the evidence to you. The reality is, there's so much evidence that we can't communicate all the two is just too much. Unless you want to spend two hours, you know, with us on a Friday, but we don't necessarily have that either.

Karen Lynch: There were 54 stories that we kind of curated this morning. This 54 stories is not something we can get through. It's just not possible. When we started this show, I was like, we'll get through, you know, nine or 10 stories. So when we started, we got through 10 stories in a half an hour. 54 not That's not math that I can really even do right now, but that is not even a two-hour show. That's not, yeah. It's crazy.

Lenny Murphy: And that's the trade-off. So as you, for our audience, as we go forward, we are going to work to try and focus on, and I think we're doing an experiment on that today, right? Maybe other than stories, kind of bucketing together. Here's a whole bunch of stuff. We're not going to get all the details, but to paint the picture. Something, but we're going to try and keep it under control. All that said, we're already four minutes in. North America is next.

Karen Lynch: North America. So listen, we have to say this, right, because we will not be having a show next week. I will be in Austin, not Amsterdam. I will be in Washington, D.C. Next Friday with the team at Green Book. Lenny will not be joining because his daughter is dancing in the dance competition.

Lenny Murphy: I will be in Chattanooga.

Karen Lynch: I wish her luck, and I wish her trophies and ribbons and pins and all the plaques that she can get for her team and herself. But I will be with as many of you as possible at the event. So if you haven't signed up yet, please do. Exchange will get you a discount when you register. Join myself and probably 1,000 others in the industry. Are on par with what we've had in the past with attendees. So I hope to see you there. It should be a great event. I can't say enough about it. Check out the agenda, if you haven't yet, and the stellar cast of speakers that we have. I really would look forward to it. We've talked a lot about it, so I don't want to take up too much time. But I really do hope to see you there. And we will be back in two weeks with this show again.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. With signal, one thing about IEX is that the signal is concentrated, right? So it's a wonderful tool to be able to see what's happening, talk to people, understand what's happening on the ground, not just articles, but like real, tangible stuff. So it'll be a heck of a show in two weeks when we come back. But let's dive in. Man, there was a lot. There was a lot. You did a great job trying to squeeze it in, compress it. It's like a balloon about to pop.

Karen Lynch: But the M&A activity is very interesting this week. So I'm going to have you start TextQL. Who's TextQL? It's just another example of these players coming out of nowhere, right? With these tools that are, you know, entering the insights and analytics space. What? And they're getting funding. We said this was going to happen and here it's happening, right? What'd you learn about TextQL?

Lenny Murphy: That's not a press release. I mean, you know, it's another, an AI version of synthesizing or text analytics on steroids, right? But, which is probably not a particularly fair way to describe it, but it's still the way my head translates it. But yeah, yeah, 17 million. I think that was an A round as well. To your point, we're just gonna see more and more. And we're seeing it now. The other 13 four 13 for ideally a consumer insights platform with reports. Yeah, the question pro bought fathom another open ended analysis text analytics. Of course, the question was always buying companies that are very inquisitive.

Karen Lynch: So just take a pause there. There. And before we talk about the next one, take a pause there. And I probably should have brought Qualitate. Let's come back to the next. Let's talk about Qualitate and Clue next because they're related. So Qualitate, another one out of nowhere, 7 million seed round to accelerate their expert research automation platform. Another one out of nowhere with And then this company called 62 million to accelerate that AI powered competitive enablement platform. So it's a little bit different really, like a kind of competitive intelligence. But again, out of nowhere, doing things that companies in our ecosystem have been doing, but they're coming out of nowhere and using AI to do it better and getting funding. 

Lenny Murphy:  Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Now clue has been around for a while. Clue has been.

Lenny Murphy: Clue has been. So I think this is a B round. For them, but still 62 million, right, for another round. They're a couple of years old, but yeah, competitive intelligence, it's all, but AI, AI, AI.

Karen Lynch: The thing that's getting me about this, and the reason why I wrote in our notes, by the way, you can't see our notes, literally, I put the notes to Lenny's, can I just say damn? Say damn. The thing that's getting me about these is, like, for everybody in the industry, you have to check out these new players, and benchmark why they're getting this funding because you're doing something right out of the gate that is catching the attention of the investors. Because if you are improving, if you are trying to make improvements to your offerings, you have to see what they're doing that is catching the eye of these investors. Not necessarily because you're going to get the investment money at this point, but to retain the customers that you have. See what's competitive at this point in time because that's the only way you're going to be able to compete with these guys.

Lenny Murphy: It is. And these companies, you know, they all. So I was asked this week to evaluate a company in our space for a potential transaction. Yeah. Let's leave it at that. Yeah. And like I'm coming to is that you look at evaluations of their competitive set. It's like, like if you are a research company and that's how you're positioned.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Valuations are way down. If you are an AI powered intelligence or data company, well, a huge difference in multiples, um, whether you're raising or selling or whatever. And that's what, and this is an example of that. We're seeing these companies that their, their position, they may, we look at them and say, well, you're a research platform, right? I mean, you've been doing, you know, whatever. 

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: But that's not how they're positioned. So they're disrupting the space, right? They're doing something different and it's more effective and they're raising. So there's something to the narrative in this, even though you scratch the surface and it's like, wait, but it's still, it's like a research company to me. So there is something to that, right? And it doesn't mean spoken mirrors. It just means that there are investors who recognize this is a big category that is prime for disruption. If you're making your thing, in a new way, and so we're seeing all of that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. It just makes me just say, damn. One more time. One more. People in the back that didn't hear me say it the first time.

Lenny Murphy: You say, damn! That's what it is.

Karen Lynch: It's a lot of money going to these brands, which we said was going to happen. We said these companies are going to pop up, and they're going to get funding, and we're going to say, where did they come from and they see the possibilities and build it from scratch. Well, again, you say Clue isn't from scratch, so I stand corrected on that point. But some of these other ones are being built from scratch in a whole different way to solve pain points. And I just think it's interesting.

Lenny Murphy: Can I do what I told you so on SpaceX?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't see what I told you. But yeah, you've been wanting to talk about it for a while. So yes, 100%, the floor is yours.

Lenny Murphy: Just this This one there's a reason why it's here in my mind because this one's all about the infrastructure and the one 100% what I respect SpaceX, you know was merged with XAI which includes grok the and in the fashion that that company and and you know the founder You know Elon Musk does they own infrastructure? They just build everything themselves to do what they're going to do. In this case, they secure the rights to buy Cursor for $60 billion. Cursor's a platform that almost every developer uses, is my understanding, right? I mean, it's kind of the core dev platform. Or pay a $10 billion penalty.

Karen Lynch: I mean, that's so interesting. That's so interesting to me.

Lenny Murphy: Anyway, keep going. It is. Mind, SpaceX is not rumored. They filed for an IPO. The assumption is it will be the largest IPO ever in history, trillions of dollars. And it's not because of the satellites. It's because of the, it's, it's because of the infrastructure they have built, including, you know, the mega centers for computing and their own chips and everything to power AI. And all of that is. Grok is the model. Grok this week released a new version, which I've been using.

Karen Lynch: Everything Clouds does, it's amazing.

Lenny Murphy: Point being, infrastructure, these platforms are building infrastructure to own the entire workflow on AI implementation and development, and that's going to continue to be a great big deal. I've kept saying don't, don't, raise one basket yet. This war is not one, right?

Karen Lynch: Everybody's more about like, there were so many tech developments in the last week. So many, so many that we're not line iteming them so many that we have, we are clustering them and talking more about them later. But, um, but yes, this, this is a big deal. And, um, and one of the reasons why, when I, when I started really mulling this one over, it's just big enough, huge enough, you know, breaking through, breaking through enough in my brain, because I'm like, the reality is, is this deal is, is shouting at me about, you know, about what this means for insights and analytics. Not just, there's something about securing the rights, securing the rights to buy for a certain amount later, which I can't shake the feeling that that's important for us. And I don't know how that's gonna manifest, but I think it's a precedent that we should be paying attention to.

Lenny Murphy: I think it is too. If you look at that infrastructure idea, if you own the data, or you own the workflow, Cursor owns the workflow, and we have companies in our space that own the data and or own the workflow and have lots of users. And those things are going to become important. I agree.

Karen Lynch: We've been talking about consolidation and we've been talking about owning data and owning workflows. But as people are trying to figure out how they can have the full stack there, we might see more of this type of deal in our industry. I agree. I agree.

Lenny Murphy: No insider knowledge, right? But no sense in naming names. But you can think. Yep.

Karen Lynch: Yep. Something that makes me say, hmm, in this case, this is very interesting. Lenny and I have not talked about any kind of M&A activity where it's securing the rights to buy later. This is the first time he and I have talked about that.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. But I think you're absolutely right.

Karen Lynch: Interesting topic. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Interesting.

Karen Lynch: So, yeah. So, we'll talk more about that later, but there are these two other partnerships that are also really interesting. So, you know, M&A activity aside, let's talk about these partnerships because, you know, we've talked about, you know, consumers using search, using AI for search, and now Burke and BrandRank AI have announced their partnership, which is digging right into this, right, how consumers are turning to AI for search to make their decisions, turning to AI search to make their purchase decisions. And in this study that Burke published, it says nearly half of consumers, 48%, used AI to inform a purchase decision in March up from just 28% in June of 2024. So within a year, a year and a couple months here, almost not quite two years, almost doubling, right? 28% to 48%. So we are seeing more and more consumers turning to AI to help them make their purchase decisions. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And very cool that I actually had the opportunity to talk to some of the senior team at Berk earlier this week.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: It was a separate thing. Yeah. But for context, and I think for this particular thing, this is a 90, Yeah, I know.

Karen Lynch: Right. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know, I, you know, they are doing that. That is a cool thing. They're ahead of the curve, recognizing brands. This is a challenge for brands. And I just love that there's this, this company's legacy company, the inter employee owned to write the, that is, they're not just stuck. Well, this is where we always did, especially Burke. They, they, you know, they train moderators.

Karen Lynch: I know, I know. I know.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. And they're stepping up. Going, wait, we got to stay abreast. We need to think about these things and to deliver more information to clients. So really impressive that, you know, if you're, if you think you're, Oh, we're an old school company. So I thought it was really cool.

Karen Lynch: Um, yeah, pretty cool.

Lenny Murphy: Uh, the lumen research part of scent attention measurement, grand outcomes. I actually did an interview this week with, uh, uh, it'll come out soonish with Patrick Homer from scent. Good example, a sample marketplace transforming themselves into a data marketplace and connecting data, and this Lumen was an example of that. Attention measurement, that's what they're marrying together now. We've talked about for years that that's what the panel companies need to do. Another great indication of that happening too.

Karen Lynch: Very cool.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: So many launches. Just so many launches.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. How do you want to do this? Because there are a lot. We just want to run through them.

Karen Lynch: I think we need to run through them for the sake of time. We can go quickly if you want to give it a start. I think just for the record, there were more that we knew about. We whittled down. So we're not talking about everything that we found out about this week. You know, but there, but, you know, there were a lot. So let's get into it. You start with Nielsen, IQ, NIQ.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, NIQ.

Karen Lynch: I mean, NIQ, we talk about them every week. They are moving. I just want to say that.

Lenny Murphy: They are. And that's what I thought that was my takeaway, another example. This is their commerce lab to build data and measurement layers for AI driven commerce. And the core is you look at everything they've done in the past few weeks. Yeah, they have this data asset. And they are monetizing the shit out of that in a variety of ways through kind of syndicated and licensing and AI plugins. That is the narrative that NIQ is doing. They are taking their core asset and just repositioning it, monetizing it in so many different ways. They're enabling new revenue streams and value creation out of that over and over and over again. And to your point, every week, here's one.

Karen Lynch: I think that's interesting because it's smart on a couple of levels. It's smart, obviously, from a PR level. They are strategically launching something new, so they're always in the news cycle. So shout out to the PR team. You're doing a good job launching something new every week to give people something new to talk about. But also, the product development team, they're working hard to develop new things, which is what you have to do to be competitive right now. They're not just saying, let's get an AI product right now, and calling it one and done like they are, they're working really hard to develop relevant products for a new era of disruption. So 100% aligned to business issues, critical business issues. Somebody actually recently was asking me if there were any, any vendors in this space that you know, they should, you know, target to consider employment with and I'm like, take a look at what they're doing. Because they are making an impression on me right now. I don't know what I don't know if they're hiring. I don't know anything like that. But I would look at them right now. I think they're making an impression on me right now.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, absolutely. They agreed. Also interesting, some of the big guys, right? Ipsos. Well, do you want to talk about this one?

Karen Lynch: Here's what's interesting. So Ipsos, they've unveiled, it's interesting for a couple of reasons for me, right? A qualitative trinity vision combining, they say, combining AI and human inputs across three Ipsos UU modules. Is their understanding, I keep putting in quotes, understanding unlimited. I dug into this to see what those were. Dynamic digital twin communities, AI powered moderation, and then they have this edge framework, which is, they're calling it, it's like signals, gen AI, social data signals, like ethnographic data. So I'm still trying to see like what the, it's human inputs, but it's not necessarily like, I'm trying to figure out the qualitative angle there because it seems a lot of, it doesn't seem like they're not having, It all seems very AI, right? It's not like they're having one-on-one conversations with people. So it's very digitized, right? Digital twins, AI moderation, and social data. It's still lacking a human component on some level to me. However, it's very tech-driven. So it's technically qual. I don't know what I want to label it. But they've got this vision. So, good luck. I wish there was something that felt a little less res tech in this thing that they're saying combines AI and human inputs. There's something about it that didn't land right with me, but I am a qualitative researcher. I wished it was digital twin communities, AI power, moderation, and something else that felt authentically human. If they're saying human in the mix, somehow I wanted it to feel a little more. That's just me being a bit biased. I don't know. That's a great point.

Lenny Murphy: Because for a company like Ipsos or any other traditional supplier, right?

Karen Lynch: And they'll come back to a lot of moderators, a lot of them. I mean, they have employed hundreds of moderators. So I feel like this does a disservice to one of their strengths, which has been the Ipsos moderator.

Lenny Murphy: Trust is a human thing, right? A company like Ipsos, same as NIQ, right? Or anybody else, right? I think any company that's making a mistake when you're just focused on the technology, that story is, that's the cheaper, faster part. And that's important and absolutely, absolutely. We're doing it too, right? And we're doing it in new ways. But for a company like Ipsos or any other full service agency, I would encourage everybody, don't back off on trust. Don't back off on the judgment layer, right? The orchestration and judgment.

Karen Lynch: There's a balance or something to it. And I'm like, I read it. And I'm like, where's the balance? I don't feel the balance in this. This feels like tech. It doesn't feel balanced. Anyway, I hate to be judgmental. I'm sorry, Ipsos. I've always believed in you and the work that you do. I wish there was balance here.

Lenny Murphy: So, well, and I think what we're saying, if so, if you're listening, your messaging doesn't have to be just all tech, right? The tech is not your differentiator. How you orchestrate it with the human, that is your defensive measure. And we'd encourage you to think about that. So Karen and I are available to consult if you want. Numerator, they continue like, like an IQ, they're flexing, you know, their real time attribution, the Holy Grail. So that's, that's really neat. And of course, they would have some perspective numerator that has purchase data, right, the receipt scanning, the survey data now, obviously, it's going to attribution, they're trying to connect to, I saw this ad, and I bought this thing, right? Because that's what you want, that's the attribution component. So, uh, so cool for them.

Karen Lynch: You know, what's funny about the next story is about SurveyMonkey. So SurveyMonkey debuts prebuilt continuous feedback tools for CX, EX, MR, and other programs. So again, Ipsos, if you're still listening, SurveyMonkey permission to be all tech, like I'm sort of like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good for them. They are like a company that has all the AI tools that you want, because they were always a DIY tech interface anyway. Like I would never expect them to have humans in the mix, you know, so it's just kind of an example, like, I feel like AI was made, or like SurveyMonkey was made for like AI to disrupt their business and just allow them to do more. And like, every time I read a story from SurveyMonkey, and I'm like, good for them, this makes perfect sense for them to lean into AI and just develop more, like, it's a perfect move for them to just do more with AI. Agreed.

Lenny Murphy: Now they do, they do have a service layer. Because, you know, for clients, they do it for us.

Karen Lynch: Okay.

Lenny Murphy: I agree. And it struck me that they're bringing down the walls, right? We've had these walls between market research, usability, employee experience. And there's like, all those are different use cases, the underlying and there's special considerations for each use case. But the underlying technology is the same. Yeah. So, right.

Karen Lynch: Uh, that's sort of what we're seeing out of Qualtrics right now. Right. Also, it's like, you know, they, they, because they, they started off that way. Then they shifted and built an entire industry. And now they're sort of like coming back. Like we're coming back to the time of like, you know, Hey, feedback is feedback.

Lenny Murphy: That 100%. And what, what, what are the, both those companies have in common that the workflow goes back to our previous conversation, they, their embedded workflow standards. Some other cool stuff, Taluna, the Rapid Claims, they've been shipping products too. It's an AI solution. Although it was interesting to screen claims, ideas, flavors, attributes of brand messaging with MaxDiff. MaxDiff is going to come up twice this week.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, you should talk about the next one too. I'm just not a MaxDiff girl. If it's brief, you should just take it.

Lenny Murphy: You know, I mean, it's a pared down conjoint, but the, um, another word you should always take. Uh, but that's the flavors part popped out at me like, Hmm. Okay. The, uh, uh, but cool for Taluna using AI to do, to simplify things. Same thing now, but this one, so I was back stiff, but I do want your take on this. Conveyor, one of the other early entrants on the AI moderated platform. A max diff update. In a qualitative scale setting, I still have a hard time thinking through that just from a flow standpoint. I need to see it. But I'm sure it's great, and I'm happy for them to do that. I just have a hard time imagining the exercise with this, or that, or this, or that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, well, last year they had a great presence in North America. I don't know our floor plan yet in North America, but I'll report back in after North America. So if they're demoing that, or if they have that at their exhibit, I will let you know.

Lenny Murphy: Please. Florian, Hendricks, Niels, if you're listening, We want to see it.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, just cuz I just have a hard time conceptualizing it So but I think it's cool as hell that you're doing it So yeah, I would I will let you know I will make I will make the mental note as soon as we get off right that time last last year they were um, they had our they they kind of say this they owned the stairs and so Yeah, you're gonna own the stairs again this year So but um, I don't know the floor plane because I'm not in sales. I don't do the exhibits I wish as if there's something wrong with it.

Lenny Murphy: Do you have enough on your plate, Karen?

Karen Lynch: Every now and then I get an email and I'm like, I'm not in sales. I have no idea. Anyway, Do you want to do it? Insights Now. Yeah. You know, spoiler alert. I heard from a little bird. A little bird told me this was coming. But I wasn't talking about it ahead of time. So it's Clara. They have an agent, Insights Now, who I worked for at one point. They have an AI agent now designed to embed behavioral intelligence across the product innovation lifecycle. So it ingests research files, either internal or external data, connecting it to a behavioral knowledge base. InsightsNow had developed a flywheel that was all about the habits, a habit flywheel about how people build a habit around their product usage, which was really interesting. And how you kind of get people into product usage and then where they enter and then where they leave. And the idea was, of course, once you get them in and product usage becomes a habit, how you keep them there. So it's a very interesting flywheel. And my guess is that's incorporated into it because it wasn't a press release. So yeah, I haven't seen it demoed. I knew it was coming. And maybe I will have a chance to learn more about it at some point now that it's launched. So good luck to Greg and Dave.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, absolutely. In a company that keeps doing cool stuff, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah. They've always been, I think I mentioned it to you. They're really bright. Greg and Dave are among some of the brightest people that I know. I mean, they had a dashboard, Power BI. When I was there, and it was years before people were, dashboards were cool is what I was saying. I'm like, you're way ahead of the dashboard. They were like just five years ahead of the dashboard thing. They can visualize people needing dashboards before people understood that in five years time, they were going to want a dashboard, you know, so, um, so I'm glad they're there. I knew they've, they've had the brains for it. Um, so I'm glad they're there and I hope it goes well. Yeah. Pretty cool. You should talk about archetype ID, you know, much more about them than I do.

Lenny Murphy: I do archetype ID, our friend Sparky early on a couple of years ago, the, uh, Ted, Ted Tagalakis, a shout out to Ted, the CEO, old buddy of mine from, uh, we did anyway, he had the brilliant idea of, Hey, let's create a marketing workflow application. Then that morphed over the years that, well, to do that right, we need to have synthetic qualitative to test ideas and concepts and then go into the execution and build all that. Now, I am interested in the name Sparky. I was like, okay. Test, use his own plot, drink some Kool-Aid. Use their platform to test new concept names or new names for the product that came up with archetype ID. And that's what the story is about, that they use their own platform. And to rebrand the company, build their whole new, that's the name, but their presence should give them a shout. They were a runner up to the competition, not a finalist. Although I believe that Ted is going to be there at IX next week. And if you do go talk to Um, it is, I, I, I'm still excited by the idea of a marketing platform that has embedded research, uh, informed by behavioral science, um, at the root of it at the base. Um, cause we haven't seen too many, too much of that yet. Um, uh, so I, I just have a real fondness for what they're doing. Cause I think that that just makes sense from insights to activation and we're and they're an example of that. But cool if they use their own, they try to use their own cool ID. Use their own tool. Archetype ID, I think that's a better name than Sparky.

Karen Lynch: So. 

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Naming is hard. Naming is hard.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. God. Yes. But any company I've ever started, that has been the biggest issue. Yes. All right. There's all this tech developments. We're just going to run through, not give links, because it's all one story. Yeah. And it was just everybody, no, me, me, me.

Karen Lynch: It was my take. So much going on. So, yeah. So, so, uh, so here's the summary. Here's the big, you go, you want to start with the arms race? Like, like those, or yeah, you start with these. Cause this is kind of where Grok plays in because you've kind of alluded already to the big Grok story. You don't have to read these kinds of bullets verbatim, like talk about it as you, if you would, you know, as you would, but start with the arms race, what's happening there. It was just everybody.

Lenny Murphy: OpenAI, Google, X, they all push their AI systems. Everybody, we're all agents all the time and building the infrastructure. OpenAI released GPT 5.5, Gemini Workspace upgraded GROK 4.3 beta, which again, I'm going to give a shout out to because I used it. Give me a second, it's worthwhile. One problem I've been running into is the token issue. So everybody knows I love Perplexity. Perplexity orchestrates different models. I use Clawed through Perplexity for my little experiments of building stuff. But the tokens, I run up against, you know, you run out of tokens. Like, well, I don't have another $1,000 to throw with this, right? Grog the beta, 4.3 it is doing everything that Clawed could do. PowerPoint made an amazing PowerPoint presentation for me this week, fully editable, whatever. 

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: It's for a fixed cost. There's no tokens. Do with that what you will, right? But from a raw capability standpoint, all of these are, they're just jockeying back and forth with, you know, I can do this, I can do this, I can do too. And, you know, and they're all, there's no claim to fame yet. I don't think that we, maybe we saw some, Claude was better for programming. Well, no, now, you know, you've got Grok and OpenAI doing that too. So that, we'll see. But boy, this week, that all popped.

Karen Lynch: So. And I think it's interesting because, well, we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. But, you know, we're, some people are limited by what your organization will allow you to do. Right. And what you're, you know, so, so like, we understand that some can't use certain platforms some people can only use this platform or you may have a personal use in a professional use but um but just because you may not be able to use something doesn't mean that they're not racing and they don't have usage around the globe you know so uh they're they're moving forward and it's fascinating because the competition is real and this is what happens right when competition is real it is moving forward it is advancing and that's right and that's what then the nature of that system is designed to do, right?

Lenny Murphy: But now in weeks, right? Or even days, how some of these things, so competitive, you would see maybe every couple of years a new innovation.

Karen Lynch: So yeah, and also one of the reasons why this seemed to be the tipping point of talking about some of the things Grok and X we're doing is this week also, so Google Meet and X are expanding into kind of everyday usage in the workspace, right? So automated meeting notes, like that's happening, right? Custom feeds, new ad inventories, like they're starting to permeate our workspaces. And so that's what I mean, like, so for us, again, we're a Google ecosystem, right? So, you know, Google Meets, now it's sort of doing everything, like meeting notes are being taken and I'm getting pop-ups all the time. I've got to ask Gemini in everything that I do. If I'm in Google Sheets, I could ask Gemini and I'm like, do I even need to go to Chat GPT anymore? I can see a time when our managing director may say, hey, do we really need to be paying for Chat GPT, which is going to be painful for me because I use it so much. But ask Gemini, if it gets smarter, then maybe we don't need to be paying for that because we're paying for Google Workspace. So as this as this starts to happen, and it gets deeper into our everyday use platforms, whatever that may be, and starts doing the things that we do every day for us, right, we're getting more and more dependent upon it. So that is starting to happen. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And using different models, right? That's an issue. We talk about competition.

Karen Lynch:  Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And I guess there's still it between the base models. But these orchestration platforms and it is Google. I mean, Google has their own as well, obviously Gemini, but I see you will be becoming much more of an orchestrator now. So, uh, by these integrations, um, perplexity as well, they're there.

Karen Lynch: Talk about this Mac mini base digital worker. Like, did you, like, it's the thing.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, they just said that what they, they, that's what they've done already with the computer, but it was, uh, it was, uh, it was, it was, uh, it was, uh, It's cloud based. Now they've realized that some hardcore developers don't want to be on the cloud. They want to be able to run the system on hardware that they own and home Mac. Cause that's what the cloud bot thing was, was on a Mac mini. And now they're, they're enabling that too. So, the developer and you're building, you don't have to do it. I mean, I've seen some people like the Mac mini that they've linked it to, like a gaming console and that's.

Karen Lynch: And that's that it's crazy it's always on it's always getting your points or whatever It's always playing your game and winning your no.

Lenny Murphy: No, I mean, yes, there's that but I mean they're using the gaming console as their interface for Plugged into the Mac mini not to run the game. That's just that's their screen it's Any of the stuff Yeah, AWS and Google, they're pairing all the furniture models in the stack, right? Doing all that. I thought that but this UK and UAE thing, especially the UAE thing was really interesting. What did you think?

Karen Lynch: Well, yeah, I mean, look, basically, there's there were a lot of articles, again, this is all consolidated, but they're moving, they're doing a lot to move from policy into procurement and kind of that's interesting, if you work for Meta and it's capturing how you're using your system.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, mouse movements.

Karen Lynch: That's interesting.

Karen Lynch: Do I want my mouse movement being captured? You know, it's, but that's happening at Meta. So, but it's causing some tension, right? But it's also causing tension in those, in those systems. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, government, so, not government, in terms of governance, like how do you manage doing usage with what, it's like, fair use isn't the right word for it. It's like, what do you govern? What do you allow? What is permissible? And what needs, what should be monitored? I mean, it's this ethical use I don't know, it's just the sticky, it's the sticky space of, Meta has a right to do what it's going to do, monitoring employee mouse movements, I guess. I mean, I know that companies have monitored employee usage of platforms and webpages and, you know, it does this, it has the right to do that and employees typically sign off on that type of monitoring. But when you see it and you read about it, it makes you think, is that really OK? Again, employees say it is OK. I don't know. It's a really slippery slope, I think. And what does it mean? I don't know.

Lenny Murphy: Look, we haven't used the term dystopian hellscape in a while. Probably a good time to do that. That is still absolutely a risk as we build all this interconnect technology. The UAE example, right. They're, they're saying we're whole damn government's going to run by connected data, right. Through AI.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. All right.

Lenny Murphy: Well, that, you know, that will have data on people and you know, so that it could go South really quick. It in your, that's what you're talking about, whether it's about a private company, public, you know, these, you can't escape the efficiency, but these are double edge swords and we should continue to recognize that even though our enthusiasm for the business impact and even personal impact is still there, it wouldn't take much for it to go south.

Karen Lynch: And I think consent, is that the word that I was looking for? Meta employees probably consent to being tracked, whether they're aware of that.

Lenny Murphy: Is it really consent? It's like, do this or you don't have a job. I mean, that's not necessarily consent.

Karen Lynch: Right? But I'm like, but do we all really know exactly what we're consenting to? You know I don't know, so you know, yeah, it's all a little unnerving. It is; it's all a little unnerving, but you want to run through the reading list real quick. I think we should I mean look we'll go really quick through these Remember we said like, you know, let's not talk about listening every single week We're going to share, we're going to share a Forbes article publishing. They published their AI 50 list spotlighting promising AI companies and surprise listens on the list. So top 50 AI spotlight companies listen there, you know, our 20 what 2024 insight innovation competition winner now on the Forbes. 50 list, top 50 list, you know, among the likes of anthropic and 11 labs and lovable and mid journey and no open AI and perplexity and thinking machine labs. So, you know, that's all just, you know, all because they won the competition, all because they won the competition. So, you know, I may have to like, you know, elbow Alfred and say, you know, please don't forget us. Because, you know, anyway, the ink, that ink article. 

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: So then there's an ink article and it's lessons from an AI startup disrupting the, you know, the $3 billion, you know, insights industry. And as I'm looking and I'm like, Trevor, this is about Trevor from iGenie, isn't it? So I had to look it up, because I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's the guy who's running iGenie now, CEO of iGenie. But they don't mention iGenie in the article, which I was like, that's a bummer. But anyway, maybe there's other people that looked it up. The article wasn't supposed to be about iGenie. It was supposed to be about Trevor, I guess. But anyway, we did the math, Trevor.

Lenny Murphy: Congratulations to you and give a shout out to Stan.

Karen Lynch: Right.

Lenny Murphy: So Stan founded a genie after he left you and lever. So, um, stands for anything. Um, uh, so yeah, I really liked Gary's article. I guess, uh, uh, Gary Ellis, uh, from rematch on, uh, maybe we're moving a little too fast with the synthetic.

Karen Lynch: Here's what's hilarious about it. So today at noon, I wrote about Synthetic, literally there's a phrase in there. He wraps up the article almost the exact same way I wrap up an article that I drafted this week that went live at noon. And I'm reading it this morning and I'm like, are you kidding me? So I then threw mine in there too. I messaged Ashley and I'm like, when's my article going live? And she's like, it's going live at noon. I'm like, okay, that's hilarious. So Gary, we are on the exact same page. We both use the word compliment. It's a compliment to other things that you're doing. It is complimentary research. It is not replacement research. We are 100% on the same page. So I'm going to be in full support of this, of Gary's take, because I agree with it completely.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, great minds think alike. Jordi Freer asked a great question on M&A and why things are different. I am in violent agreement with Jordi as well, right? Simply because there's no normalcy bias that we should be expecting right now, right? The fundamentals are different. So therefore, everything that flows from the fundamentals are different. The variables have changed. And Jordi did a good job of contracting the phases of M&A activity over the years. And we're not just in consolidation and hyperscaling. Everything's compressed. It's different. The metrics are different. How you measure companies are different. Yeah, anyway.

Karen Lynch: Now, the Search Live. One of the things he says, before we talk about the Search Live thing, one of the things Jordi says is, the next wave of M&A in this industry won't be led by research groups, buying specialists, or PE funds. It will be driven by technology and data infrastructure. Players and some names you wouldn't expect. And, um, acquiring for reasons that have very little to do with traditional research economics. And I'm like, you know, that's interesting because, um, Like that's what I would love to dig into more. Um, so Jordi, like round two, talk to us a little bit more about like, you know, what are some of the reasons if it's not traditional research economics, what are some of the reasons?

Lenny Murphy: Like it's the moats , you have unique data. You own a workflow. Or you have specialized trust within this category specialization. My take, Jordan. But I suspect that you'll have similar conclusions that I've arrived at.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So the research lives, yeah, we just like the IPA bellwether. This is a UK study that over here on UK marketers, research budgets. So they revise it downward in Q1. I think this is a context error. I don't think budgets are declining. I think budgets are being reallocated. So I think this is probably more definitional, is my guess. Maybe I'm wrong. Because I'm not hearing that budgets are declining. I'm not seeing evidence budgets are declining. What I am seeing is the budgets are just being spent in different ways.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. But this actually, I see what's written here in our brief. But if we open up the link, its fourth quarter of 2025. This report is delayed. So anyway, it's just delayed. I don't know. Was it this way last year? Was it down? Does it matter? I'm so sorry, but does it matter what it was doing first quarter of 2025? I wish this report was telling because that money is coming on like, yeah, I've never seen SMR.

Lenny Murphy: I love this report, but it is always a year backwards. So I'm looking forward to seeing the new one. Yeah, but you know, it's, it's not gonna measure where things are right this second. But speaking of measuring things, and we'll wrap up with this, the Qualtrics published their 2026 market research trends report. It's all about AI adoption. I consider it a real compliment to Grit. They cover topics in a different way than we do. And it's not topics we don't cover, because we don't have time and space. So check it out. They talk to a buttload of researchers, buttload of clients. And that is where their numbers are what I rely on to understand the broader scope of AI adoption and the trends that are happening there from a workflow standpoint, because that's their area of focus. And it's really, I'm still adjusting to it, but it's good stuff.

Karen Lynch: Shout out to them. They are our signature sponsor at IAX North America. They actually sponsor one of our stages, though, and they have five talks at our event. So they have one talk on the Blue Stage and then four talks on the Qualtrics Market Search Stage at our event. So amongst our biggest Uh, sponsors at the event and, um, we're so grateful for their support of IX North America. So we will see that team next week. 100%.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. On that note, let's, uh, let's sign off. We did, we set a new, new record. Um, yeah, we knew it going into it. Uh, although we, I, I'm pretty impressed. We got through everything we did within, uh, Karen safely travels to the whole team. Everybody's next week. Enjoy the event. I will. Have FOMO, of course, but have a great time.

Karen Lynch: Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure we all will, and we will miss you.

Lenny Murphy: One day, we just got to get the timing right.

Karen Lynch: We'll see you all there, I hope.

Lenny Murphy: Yes.

Links from the episode:

TextQL raises $17M to expand its AI-based enterprise data infrastructure and analytics platform 

Ideally, the Kiwi consumer insights startup Google and Telstra use, raises $13.4 million Series A 

QuestionPro acquires Fathom AI 

Qualitate raises a $7M seed round to accelerate its expert research automation platform 

Klue raises $62M to accelerate its AI-powered competitive enablement platform 

SpaceX secures rights to buy Cursor for $60B later this year or pay $10B for the companies’ work together 

Burke and BrandRank.AI announce a strategic partnership 

Lumen Research Partners with Cint 

NIQ Launches Commerce Lab 

Revelation for Ipsos' New Qualitative 'Trinity' 

Numerator launches Real-Time Attribution 

SurveyMonkey makes continuous listening accessible with guided programs 

Toluna launches Rapid Claims AI 

Conveo introduces a MaxDiff update 

InsightsNow launches Claira 

ArchetypeID uses its own AI platform to solve a trademark-driven rebrand 

Forbes 2026 AI 50 List 

Inc. - 5 Lessons From an AI Startup That’s Quietly Disrupting a $30 Billion Industry  

Gary Ellis warns that synthetic data is powerful but may be moving too far, too fast 

What Synthetic Research Can Do Now and What it Still Cant 

Jordi Ferrer outlines three waves of insights-industry M&A and why the current wave is different 

UK marketers report lower research budgets – IPA Bellwether 

Qualtrics publishes its 2026 Market Research Trends Report