Bolt Insight, a London-based market research company that uses AI-moderated interviews to help brands capture consumer insights, has raised a £7 million funding round led by Pembroke VCT. Pembroke invested £3.5 million, with additional participation from 212, Active Partners, Velocity, and TIBAS Ventures.
The company said the funding will support global expansion of BoltChatAI and advance a broader product ambition to build an “Assistant AI Chief Insights Officer,” positioned as a real-time intelligence partner that can function as a decision-making platform for brands. Bolt Insight said the system is designed to answer business questions by drawing on a company’s historical research and market data, while also autonomously engaging real consumers through new AI-moderated interviews to generate fresh insights on demand.
Bolt Insight described the shift as moving from passive, project-based research to an always-on intelligence hub embedded in day-to-day decision-making. The company said its platform has already interviewed more than 5 million consumers across 90 markets and is trusted by 11 of the world’s top 15 consumer packaged goods companies, including Unilever, Danone, and Reckitt. Bolt Insight said it has worked with more than 150 brands in over 20 countries, has a 90% client renewal rate, and has earned multiple industry awards, including a recent win for ‘Best Online Qual’ at the MRS Operations Awards.
Bolt Insight is led by CEO and Co-Founder Hakan Yurdakul, whose background includes 14 years at Unilever in brand strategy and transformation, and CTO and Co-Founder Kerem Turgay, an engineer trained at Harvard and ETH Zurich with experience at Siemens, Coca-Cola, and Afiniti. The founding team also includes Baybars Umur, Ester Marchetti, and Melek Özsoy, and the company said it has a 50-strong team across London, Istanbul, Paris, New York, and Singapore.
The company said it has used prior pre-seed and seed rounds in 2020, 2022, and 2023 to expand into new markets and grow its team. With plans to build out its Assistant AI Chief Insights Officer concept, Bolt Insight identified a large addressable opportunity, noting that North America accounts for 52% of global market research spend and that the broader global insights market is valued at around $153 billion.
KEY QUOTES:
“When we launched Bolt Insight in 2019, our mission was to bring real consumer voices into the heart of business decision-making. With the launch of BoltChatAI in 2022, we proved that AI-moderated qualitative research could deliver rich insight at unprecedented speed and scale. Today, we’re building on that foundation with a bold new ambition, to create the Assistant AI Chief Insights Officer, a real-time intelligence system that can answer critical business questions instantly or engage real consumers when new thinking is needed. This new investment will power the next phase of that journey. We’re grateful to Pembroke for their partnership as we redefine the role of insight within organisations.”
Hakan Yurdakul, CEO & Co-Founder of Bolt Insight
“Bolt Insight is a brilliant example of how AI can lead change in an established industry by putting real consumer voices at the heart of decision-making. Hakan, Kerem and the rest of the team have built an impressive platform trusted by some of the world’s biggest brands, blending the speed of AI with the depth of human insight to deliver smarter, faster research at scale. As demand for real-time intelligence continues to grow, Bolt is perfectly positioned to lead a new generation of consumer understanding. We’re proud to support the team as they expand globally and continue redefining what’s possible in market research.”
Andrew Wolfson, CEO at Pembroke Investment Managers
“We’ve been consistently impressed by Bolt Insight’s thoughtful approach to helping brands stay closer to their consumers. The team has built a platform that makes real human insight more accessible, faster, and more globally inclusive, without losing the depth and nuance that truly informs decisions. In a landscape where research often becomes transactional, Bolt Insight stands out by creating space for genuine understanding at scale. We’re grateful to support them on the next stage of their journey and look forward to what they will build next.”
Ali Karabey, Managing Director at 212
