📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring

Alfred Wahlforss was running out of options. His startup, Listen Labs, needed to hire over 100 engineers, but competing against Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers seemed impossible. So he spent $5,000 — a fifth of his marketing budget — on a billboard in San Francisco displaying what looked like gibberish: five strings of random numbers.

The numbers were actually AI tokens. Decoded, they led to a coding challenge: build an algorithm to act as a digital bouncer at Berghain, the Berlin nightclub famous for rejecting nearly everyone at the door. Within days, thousands attempted the puzzle. 430 cracked it. Some got hired. The winner flew to Berlin, all expenses paid.

That unconventional approach has now attracted $69 million in Series B funding, led by Ribbit Capital with participation from Evantic and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Conviction, and Pear VC. The round values Listen Labs at $500 million and brings its total capital to $100 million. In nine months since launch, the company has grown annualized revenue by 15x to eight figures and conducted over one million AI-powered interviews.

"When you obsess over customers, everything else follows," Wahlforss said in an interview with VentureBeat. "Teams that use Listen bring the customer into every decision, from marketing to product, and when the customer is delighted, everyone is."

Why traditional market research is broken, and what Listen Labs is building to fix it

Listen's AI researcher finds participants, conducts in-depth interviews, and delivers actionable insights in hours, not weeks. The platform replaces the traditional choice between quantitative surveys — which provide statistical precision but miss nuance—and qualitative interviews, which deliver depth but cannot scale.

Wahlforss explained the limitation of existing approaches: "Essentially surveys give you false precision because people end up answering the same question… You can't get the outliers. People are actually not honest on surveys." The alternative, one-on-one human interviews, "gives you a lot of depth. You can ask follow up questions. You can kind of double check if they actually know what they're talking about. And the problem is you can't scale that."

The platform works in four steps: users create a study with AI assistance, Listen recruits participants from its global network of 30 million people, an AI moderator conducts in-depth interviews with follow-up questions, and results are packaged into executive-ready reports including key themes, highlight reels, and slide decks.

What distinguishes Listen's approach is its use of open-ended video conversations rather than multiple-choice forms. "In a survey, you can kind of guess what you should answer, and you have four options," Wahlforss said. "Oh, they probably want me to buy high income. Let me click on that button versus an open ended response. It just generates much more honesty."

The dirty secret of the $140 billion market research industry: rampant fraud

Listen finds and qualifies the right participants in its global network of 30 million people. But building that panel required confronting what Wahlforss called "one of the most shocking things that we've learned when we entered this industry"—rampant fraud.

"Essentially, there's a financial transaction involved, which means there will be bad players," he explained. "We actually had some of the largest companies, some of them have billions in revenue, send us people who claim to be kind of enterprise buyers to our platform and our system immediately detected, like, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud."

The company built what it calls a "quality guard" that cross-references LinkedIn profiles with video responses to verify identity, checks consistency across how participants answer questions, and flags suspicious patterns. The result, according to Wahlforss: "People talk three times more. They're much more honest when they talk about sensitive topics like politics and mental health."

Emeritus, an online education company that uses Listen, reported that approximately 20% of survey responses previously fell into the fraudulent or low-quality category. With Listen, they reduced this to almost zero. "We did not have to replace any responses because of fraud or gibberish information," said Gabrielli Tiburi, Assistant Manager of Customer Insights at Emeritus.

How Microsoft, Sweetgreen, and Chubbies are using AI interviews to build better products

The speed advantage has proven central to Listen's pitch. Traditional customer research at Microsoft could take four to six weeks to generate insights. "By the time we get to them, either the decision has been made or we lose out on the opportunity to actually influence it," said Romani Patel, Senior Research Manager at Microsoft.

With Listen, Microsoft can now get insights in days, and in many cases, within hours.

The platform has already powered several high-profile initiatives. Microsoft used Listen Labs to collect global customer stories for its 50th anniversary celebration. "We wanted users to share how Copilot is empowering them to bring their best self forward," Patel said, "and we were able to collect those user video stories within a day." Traditionally, that kind of work would have taken six to eight weeks.

Simple Modern, an Oklahoma-based drinkware company, used Listen to test a new product concept. The process took about an hour to write questions, an hour to launch the study, and 2.5 hours to receive feedback from 120 people across the country. "We went from 'Should we even have this product?' to 'How should we launch it?'" said Chris Hoyle, the company's Chief Marketing Officer.

Chubbies, the shorts brand, achieved a 24x increase in youth research participation—growing from 5 to 120 participants — by using Listen to overcome the scheduling challenges of traditional focus groups with children. "There's school, sports, dinner, and homework," explained Lauren Neville, Director of Insights and Innovation. "I had to find a way to hear from them that fit into their schedules."

The company also discovered product issues through AI interviews that might have gone undetected otherwise. Wahlforss described how the AI "through conversations, realized there were like issues with the the kids short line, and decided to, like, interview hundreds of kids. And I understand that there were issues in the liner of the shorts and that they were, like, scratchy, quote, unquote, according to the people interviewed." The redesigned product became "a blockbuster hit."

The Jevons paradox explains why cheaper research creates more demand, not less

Listen Labs is entering a massive but fragmented market. Wahlforss cited research from Andreessen Horowitz estimating the market research ind…

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🔗 Sumber: venturebeat.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: Volvo EX60: World’s first Gemini-powered AI EV debuts with

Volvo has unveiled the EX60 as the world’s first electric vehicle built around Google Gemini, marking a major shift in how cars integrate artificial intelligence.

Revealed globally on January 21, 2026, the EX60 debuts Volvo’s new SPA3 800-volt platform and its HuginCore software-defined architecture.

Unlike traditional infotainment systems, Gemini acts as a central intelligence layer across the vehicle. Volvo positions the EX60 not just as an electric SUV, but as an AI-native vehicle designed to improve continuously after delivery.

The midsize electric SUV also introduces major gains in performance, charging speed, and computing power. Volvo says the EX60 represents the company’s clearest step yet toward software-led vehicle development.

Gemini at the core

The EX60 runs on a dual-chip setup combining NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8255 processors. Together, they deliver more than 250 trillion operations per second, enabling real-time AI processing across safety, navigation, and cabin systems.

Google Gemini replaces command-based voice assistants with natural conversation. Drivers can issue complex, multi-step requests without specific prompts.

Tasks such as pulling an address from an email and adding it to navigation happen through simple speech.

Gemini also connects directly to Google services, including Gmail and Calendar. This allows drivers to manage schedules, search messages, and plan routes without leaving the driving interface.

Volvo plans to expand Gemini’s capabilities through over-the-air updates.

Future releases will allow the AI to interpret live video from the vehicle’s 360-degree cameras. The system will then answer questions about landmarks or surroundings in real time.

Safety systems also rely heavily on AI. Volvo trains its predictive software using anonymized data from its global vehicle fleet. The system learns from accidents and near-misses to continuously refine collision avoidance and driver assistance behavior.

New electric foundation

The EX60 marks the first production vehicle built on Volvo’s SPA3 800V architecture. The platform supports ultra-fast charging, higher efficiency, and improved thermal management across all variants.

Volvo also introduces large-scale “mega casting” for the EX60’s structure. The approach reduces part count while increasing rigidity and lowering overall vehicle weight.

The entry-level P6 rear-wheel-drive variant produces 374 horsepower and uses an 80 kWh battery.

Volvo estimates a WLTP range of around 385 miles (620 kilometers). The dual-motor P10 AWD delivers 503 horsepower with a 91 kWh battery and up to 447 miles (720 kilometers) of range.

The flagship P12 AWD delivers 670 horsepower and accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h (0–62 mph) in under 3.5 seconds. Its 112 kWh battery enables a WLTP range of up to 503 miles (810 kilometers).

On a 400 kW charger, the EX60 can add up to 212 miles (340 kilometers) of range in about 10 minutes. The vehicle ships with a native NACS port for access to Tesla’s Supercharger network.

The EX60 also supports vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-load functionality. Owners can power homes or external devices directly from the car.

Inside, the SUV features a 15-inch curved OLED display and a redesigned two-spoke steering wheel. A Bowers & Wilkins sound system delivers Dolby Atmos spatial audio, with Apple Music integrated into the system.

Volvo has opened EX60 orders in Europe. U.S. orders begin in late spring 2026, with deliveries starting in summer.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com