In a world where a viral TikTok video can make a brand trend globally in just a few hours, the traditional market research cycle, which often spans 12 weeks, is becoming a liability.
The gap between a survey question and the responses of a broad (or specific) group of respondents has become a major obstacle for Fortune 500 decision makers, who are forced to navigate volatile geopolitical and economic changes with data that is often out of date by the time it hits the slides, such as Industry experts have noted.
broxa predictive human intelligence startup, recently announced a strategic funding round after a year in which they reported 10x revenue growth. His proposal is as ambitious as it is technical: the creation of a "parallel universe" populated by 60,000 digital twins of real, living humans and all their demographic profiles and consumer preferences, allowing companies to conduct unlimited experiments in hours instead of months.
“These digital twins are one-to-one replicas of real individuals," said Brox CEO Hamish Brocklebank in a recent video call interview with VentureBeat. "We recruit real people like a normal panel company does, pay them to interview them and capture all the data around them, entirely consent-based.”
The company, which currently has 14 employees, is positioning itself as the antithesis of the "crazy" research industry. By replacing statistical models with behavioral replications, Brox aims to transform the way the world’s largest banks and pharmaceutical giants anticipate human reactions to high-risk global events and market shifts, or specific product launches and personnel news, and everything in between.
The types of surveys and specific questions that Brox asks its digital twins are completely open and can be customized to fit the use cases and goals of any enterprise customer imaginable.
According to Brocklebank, examples of survey questions include: “What happens if the United States invades Iran or Greenland? Will Bank of America depositors put more money in their account or withdraw more money? Or, in pharmaceuticals, if RFK Jr. says something next week, will that make people more likely or less likely to get vaccinated?”
Non-synthetic people: AI copies of real people
The main differentiator of Brox technology lies in the fidelity of its input data.
Although many competitors in the "digital audience" space is based on purely synthetic identities (generic characters generated by large language models (LLM). Brocklebank argues that these methods inevitably produce "pending AI".
Purely synthetic audiences often cluster around a narrow distribution of responses, over-indexing "correct" either "healthy" behaviors (like eating broccoli) due to inherent biases in the underlying models.
brox "Digital twins" Rather, they are one-to-one behavioral replicas of real individuals who have been recruited and interviewed in exhaustive depth. The process is intensive:
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In-depth interviews: The company conducts hours of real, AI-powered interviews with each participant.
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Psychological depth: Data collection seeks to understand fundamental aspects. "decision drivers," including education, relationships and even marital stability.
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Data density: For some twins, Brox maintains up to 300 pages of text data, representing what Brocklebank calls "the deepest per-person data set in existence".
to solve the "black box" common problem in AI, Brox uses a "chain of reasoning" for its predictive results. When a digital twin predicts a reaction (such as how an individual with a net worth of $2 billion might respond to a specific increase in interest rates), the model introspects and provides a step-by-step explanation for that decision.
This allows clients to understand not only that will happen, but the underlying psychology of because is happening.
Climbing the "unscalable" interview
The product offering is currently available in the US, UK, Japan and Turkey. Brox has successfully digitized specific high-value cohorts that are traditionally difficult for researchers to access.
This includes a panel "high net worth" individuals (those worth more than $5 million) and specialized medical professionals such as dermatologists, including a billionaire.
However, the greatest value for customers is likely to be found in the aggregate mass of all individuals who can be surveyed en masse and/or segmented according to their demographic group, especially those at lower and middle income levels, whose purchasing and decision-making power is more limited and whose market orientation is greater.
One of the most unique aspects of the Brox platform is its incentive structure. To ensure the twins stay up to date, they check back in with their real-world counterparts frequently.
For high-net-worth individuals who are not motivated by small cash payments, Brox has issued Stock Appreciation Rights (SARs), essentially making these participants "investors" on the company’s success to ensure they continue to provide high-fidelity personal updates. The platform’s use cases currently focus on two main sectors:
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Pharmaceutical products: Predict vaccine hesitancy or how doctors might react to new biologics based on changes in the political climate.
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Finance: Simulate how depositors at major banks might move funds in response to geopolitical events, such as conflicts in the Middle East.
As to why go to the trouble of interviewing and digitally cloning real people instead of simply creating synthetic, entirely fictional characters and audience personas using LLM and other AI models, Brocklebank offered his perspective.
“You can create 10,000 truly synthetic digital twins, but the answers will still be normalized to a very tight distribution, which is unrealistic when you are actually asking real people:" Brocklebank said.
By maintaining a pre-designed audience of 60,000 twins, the company allows clients to avoid the recruiting phase of research. A large US bank or a global pharmaceutical giant can now "consultation" the digital population and receive a validated analysis in a matter of hours.
Prices and accessibility
Unlike traditional research companies that charge per project or per respondent, Brox operates as a high-end Software as a Service (SaaS) platform with enterprise-grade commercial licenses. The company avoids "seat" either "use" limits that often hinder rapid experimentation within large organizations.
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Price levels: Subscriptions are sold as general fixed rates, starting from a minimum of $100,000 per year.
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First level contracts: For larger deployments involving multiple teams and global data access, contracts scale up to 1.5 million dollars a year.
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Use rights: Clients are granted unlimited use during the contract period. This allows them to run thousands of simulations without worrying about incremental costs, fostering a culture of "trying everything" before deployment.
From a legal and privacy point of view, digital twins are based on a "entirely consent-based" structure. While the twins can be traced back to real human data for internal validation, the platform is designed to provide aggregated behavioral information that protects the anonymity of participants while maintaining the predictive power of their digital replicas.
Rejecting the rise of Kalshi, Polymarket and ‘prediction markets’
The tech industry has recently seen a surge in valuations and interest in "prediction markets" such as PolyMarket and Kalshi, which allow users to bet on the outcomes of various global events.
However, Brox leadership maintains a clear distance from these platforms, citing a "personal disdain" for betting markets from both a moral and intellectual perspective.
Brocklebank maintains that while betting markets can predict results (for example, who wins an election), offer zero utility to business decision makers because they do not provide the necessary information. "because".
Knowing that there is a 60% chance that a given candidate will win does not help a company adjust its consumer strategy; knowledge because a specific group of depositors is feeling anxious.
Investors like Scribble Ventures, Wonder Ventures, and Vela Partners have backed this. "human first" focus on AI, betting that the moat created by deep human data will prove more resilient than the commoditized models of synthetic data providers.
As Brox prepares for launches in the Middle East and APAC, the company moves towards its ultimate goal: simulating the entire world as a "parallel universe" to make risk-free decisions.
