Agile Market Research & Polling · MarTech Vendor
Listen Labs
Enterprise AI platform for end-to-end qualitative customer research.
Available information varies by company and source.
Profile record updated:
Company facts
- Official name
- Merlin AI, Inc.
- Entity type
- COMPANY
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, United States
- Company size
- 201–500
- Market cluster / sector
- Agile Market Research & Polling
- Market role
- MarTech Vendor
- Official website
- listenlabs.ai
What Listen Labs does
Listen Labs operates a proprietary B2B SaaS research platform. It creates value by replacing fragmented research workflows with one environment for designing studies, accessing participants, running adaptive AI interviews, analysing evidence and distributing traceable findings. Customers purchase contracted platform access and research capacity, while the participant network, multilingual interviewing capability and accumulated research workspace support recurring usage and account expansion.
Category differentiation
Listen Labs is a B2B qualitative customer-research platform, not a generic survey tool or a consumer listening app. Listen Twins are interview-grounded audience models, not generic synthetic-persona generation.
Strategic context
AI-supported assessment from the existing company research; distinguish interpretation from sourced facts.
Merlin AI, Inc., trading as Listen Labs, provides enterprise software for qualitative customer and market research. Its Listen platform combines study design, participant recruitment, AI-moderated video, voice and text interviews, multilingual fieldwork, analysis and source-linked research deliverables. Listen Twins extends the platform with audience-specific digital models trained on real interviews for concept, pricing, campaign and messaging testing. The company sells to enterprise consumer-insights, marketing, product, UX, strategy and research teams, as well as agencies and market-research organisations. It monetises through customer-specific enterprise subscriptions, usage charges, credits, order forms and separately scoped implementation or consulting work. Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire the company in September 2026, subject to closing conditions.
Company news briefing
Briefing updated:
Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an enterprise AI platform for qualitative customer research, for approximately $2 billion. The transaction follows Listen Labs walking away from a planned $125 million Series C funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation to pursue acquisition talks. Upon closing, Listen Labs will be integrated into Salesforce AI Labs to enhance CRM workflows with dynamic customer research capabilities.
Business model & monetisation
Listen Labs monetises through enterprise software subscriptions and usage-based charges negotiated in proposals, order forms and project-specific credits. It uses a sales-led contracting model rather than published self-service pricing. It also earns fees from separately scoped implementation, integration, configuration and consulting statements of work.
- Enterprise platform subscriptions
- Software Subscription
- Research usage, credits and project-specific capacity
- Pay-per-Use
- Implementation, integration, configuration and consulting
- Service Fee
Products & capabilities
No products with linked sources are available in this view.
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Competitors & alternatives
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AI-moderated enterprise platform for scalable customer and market research.
Enterprise UX research and human insight software platform.
Enterprise SaaS for experience management, feedback analytics and workflow action.
AI SaaS for synthetic user, product and market research.
Synthetic AI market research for enterprise go-to-market planning.
Side-by-side comparisons
Recent recorded signals
Dates refer to the source publication. Older entries are historical context, not evidence of a new event.
Listen Labs Launches Listen Twins AI Models
AI/ML · Recorded impact score: 2/5
Listen Labs, an AI platform for customer understanding, launched Listen Twins, which are one-to-one AI models of real people in a company's target audience. Each Twin is built from an in-depth interview with a real person and can predict their behavior and reasoning. Companies can query a panel of 100+ Twins and get responses in seconds, with test accuracy matching real answers at 93%. The platform recruits from a network of over 50 million people and enriches each model with company-specific data. Use cases include testing campaign concepts, messaging, product pricing, and market entry. Listen Labs emphasizes responsible development and recommends full research studies for high-stakes decisions.
- Listen Labs launched Listen Twins, AI models of real people predicted to behave like them.
- Each Twin is built from an in-depth interview and can predict what that person will do and why.
Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Listen Labs
Recorded impact score: 2/5
Salesforce announced a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research platform that automates interviews and analysis. The deal, estimated at around $2 billion (terms not disclosed), is expected to close in Salesforce's fiscal Q4 2027, pending regulatory approval. Founded in 2023, Listen Labs offers a network of over 50 million research participants and supports interviews in 120+ languages. Its AI capabilities include research design, participant recruitment, interview conduction, response analysis, and creating 'digital twins'—AI simulations of customer behavior. The acquisition will integrate Listen Labs into Salesforce AI Labs, aiming to bring qualitative research into CRM workflows, enhancing Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud with dynamic customer context for AI agents. Founders Alfred Wahlforss and Florian Juengermann will remain CEO and CTO, respectively. This move could make customer research a living data source within Salesforce's ecosystem, though integration specifics are yet to be detailed.
- Salesforce announced a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI customer research platform.
- Financial terms were not disclosed, but reports estimate the deal at around $2 billion.
Listen Labs abandons $1.5B funding for Salesforce acquisition talks
M&A · Recorded impact score: 4/5
Market research startup Listen Labs signed a term sheet for a $125 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, with Menlo Ventures leading, but walked away from the deal. This rare move likely stems from acquisition talks with Salesforce, which has been negotiating to buy Listen Labs for around $2 billion, according to Business Insider. The talks are not finalized. Listen Labs, which uses voice AI for customer interviews, has about $30 million in annualized revenue. Its competitors include Simile, which recently raised $200 million at a $2 billion valuation. If Salesforce talks collapse, VCs expect Listen Labs to return to market seeking a valuation of $2 billion or higher. Salesforce may decide the 67x revenue multiple is too steep. Listen Labs' customers include Microsoft, Canva, Anthropic, and Sweetgreen.
- Listen Labs signed a term sheet for a $125 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, with Menlo Ventures set to lead.
- Listen Labs walked away from the signed term sheet, a rare occurrence in venture capital.
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Questions about Listen Labs
What is Listen Labs?
Listen Labs is an enterprise AI platform that runs qualitative customer research from study design and recruitment through interviews, analysis and source-linked deliverables.
Who uses Listen Labs?
Enterprise consumer-insights, marketing, product, UX, communications and strategy teams use it, alongside agencies and market-research organisations.
How does Listen Labs make money?
It sells enterprise subscriptions, usage-based capacity and credits, plus separately scoped implementation, integration and consulting services.
Sources & coverage
This profile uses public, official and technically observable information. Missing information does not prove that a product or relationship does not exist. The list below does not imply that every profile statement has been verified.
18 publicly documented primary sources and citations linked across the market graph.
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