In a world where a viral TikTok video can make a brand trend globally in mere hours, the traditional market research cycle – which often lasts up to 12 weeks – is becoming a liability.
The lag between a survey question and the answers of a wide (or targeted) group of respondents has become a primary hurdle for Fortune 500 decision makers, who are forced to navigate volatile geopolitical and economic shifts with data that is often out of date by the time they reach the slide deck, as industry experts have observed.
Brox, a predictive human intelligence startup, recently announced a strategic funding round after a year where they reported 10X revenue growth. His proposal is as ambitious as it is technical: the construction of "parallel universe" Populated with 60,000 digital twins of real, living humans and their complete demographic profiles and consumer preferences, allowing enterprises to run unlimited experiments in hours instead of months.
“These digital twins are one-to-one replicas of real, actual persons," Brox CEO Hamish Brocklebank said in a recent video call interview with VentureBeat. "We recruit real people like a normal panel company, pay them to interview them, and capture all the data around them – completely consent driven.
The company, currently a mere 14-person operation, is positioning itself as the opposite "crazy" Research Industry. By replacing statistical models with behavioral replications, Brox aims to change how the world’s largest banks and pharmaceutical giants predict human reactions to high-risk global and market-shifting events, or narrow, targeted product releases and personnel news, and everything in between.
The types of surveys and specific questions that Brox asks its digital twins are completely open-ended and can be customized to suit the use cases and goals of any potential business customer.
According to Brocklebank, examples of survey questions include: “What would happen if the US invades Iran or Greenland? Will Bank of America depositors put more money into their accounts or take more money out? Or, in pharmaceuticals, if RFK Jr. says something next week, will that make people more or less likely to take the vaccine?”
Not synthetic people – AI copies of real people
The main differentiator of Brox’s technology lies in the fidelity of its input data.
While many competitors "digital audience" The space depends entirely on synthetic identities – generic personalities generated by large language models (LLMs) – Brocklebank argues that these methods inevitably produce "oh slope".
Purely synthetic audiences often coalesce around limited distribution of answers, over-indexing "Correct" Or "Healthy" behavior (e.g. eating broccoli) due to implicit biases in underlying models.
brox’s "digital twin" Instead there are one-to-one behavioral replicas of real individuals who have been recruited and interviewed in detailed depth. The process is intensive:
- in-depth interviews: The company conducts hours of real and AI-powered interviews with each participant.
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Psychological depth: Data collection seeks to understand fundamental "decision driver," That includes parenting, relationships, and even marital stability.
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Data Density: For some twins, Brox holds up to 300 pages of textual data, indicating Brocklebank. "The deepest per capita data set that exists".
to solve "black box" Common problem in AI, Brox uses one "logic chain" For its predicted output. When a digital twin predicts a reaction – such as how a person with a net worth of $2 billion might react to a specific interest rate hike – the model introspects and provides a step-by-step explanation for that decision.
This not only helps customers understand What will happen, but its underlying psychology Why This is happening.
scaling "Insignificant" Interview
The product offering is currently available in the US, UK, Japan and Türkiye. Brox has successfully digitized exclusive, high-value groups that have traditionally been difficult for researchers to access.
It consists of a panel of "high net worth" individuals (those worth more than $5 million) and specialized medical professionals such as dermatologists – including one multi-billionaire.
However, the greatest value to customers is likely to lie in the total group of all individuals who can be surveyed collectively and/or segmented into demographics, particularly those at middle and lower income levels, whose purchasing power and decision-making abilities are more constrained and whose market-
One of the more unique aspects of the Brox platform is its incentive structure. Real-world counterparts are contacted frequently to ensure that the twins remain updated.
For high-net-worth individuals who are not motivated by small cash payouts, Brox issued Stock Appreciation Rights (SARs), essentially making these participants. "investors" The company’s success includes ensuring that they continue to provide high-fidelity personalized updates. Use cases for the platform currently focus on two primary areas:
- Pharmaceuticals: Anticipating vaccine hesitancy or how physicians may respond to new biologics based on the changing political climate.
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finance: Simulating how depositors at major banks might move funds in response to geopolitical events, such as conflict in the Middle East.
Why go to the trouble of interviewing and digitally cloning real people instead of creating completely fictional, synthetic audience characters and personas using LLM and other AI models, Brocklebank offered his approach.
“You could create 10,000 truly synthetic digital twins, but the answers would still be normalized into a very tight distribution, which is not realistic when you’re actually asking real people," Brocklebank said.
By maintaining a pre-built audience of 60,000 twins, the company enables clients to bypass the recruitment phase of research. A big US bank or a global pharma giant can now do this "Question" Digital population and get a validated analysis in just a few hours.
Pricing and Access
Unlike traditional research firms, which charge on a per-project or per-respondent basis, Brox operates as a high-end Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform with enterprise-level commercial licensing. The company avoids this "seat" Or "Use" Limitations that often hinder rapid experimentation within large organizations.
- Pricing Level: Subscriptions are sold as a blanket flat fee, starting at the lowest fee possible $100,000 per year.
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Top tier contracts: For larger deployments involving multiple teams and global data access, the scope of contracts is expanded $1.5 million per year.
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Usage Rights: customers are allowed unlimited use During the contract period. This allows them to run thousands of simulations without worrying about rising costs, encouraging culture "test everything" Before deployment.
From a legal and privacy perspective, digital twins are built on a "completely consensual driven" framework. While the twins can be traced back to real human data for internal validation, the platform is designed to provide holistic behavioral insights that preserve the predictive power of their digital replicas while protecting the anonymity of the participants.
Rejecting Kalshi, Polymarket and the rise of ‘prediction markets’
The tech industry has seen a recent surge in valuations and interest "prediction market" Such as Polymarket and Kalashi, which allow users to bet on the outcomes of various global events.
However, Brock’s leadership maintains a distinct distance from these platforms, citing "personal insult" From both an ethical and intellectual perspective to betting markets.
Brocklebank argues that the market can predict when betting Result (for example, who wins an election), they provide zero utility to business decision makers because they fail to provide "Why".
Knowing that a certain candidate has a 60% chance of winning does not help a company adjust its consumer strategy; to know Why A specific group of depositors are feeling worried.
It is backed by investors including Scribble Ventures, Wonder Ventures and Vela Partners "human-first" approach to AI, betting that the gap created by deep human data will prove more resilient than the commoditized models of synthetic data providers.
As Brox prepares to launch in the Middle East and APAC, the company is moving toward its ultimate goal: having the entire world emulate it as a model. "parallel universe" To take risk free decisions.
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