Market analysis is a $90 billion trade that helps manufacturers determine greatest current themselves to potential prospects. However that market perception isn’t low cost, neither is it fast. Cashew Analysis needs to alter that utilizing AI.
Calgary, Alberta-based Cashew makes use of AI to develop market analysis plans and surveys for manufacturers based mostly on what info they’re on the lookout for — like what their model recognition is for a selected inhabitants or how a advertising tagline resonates with prospects. Cashew then sends the survey to actual individuals and makes use of AI to summarize and digest the findings.
Cashew was one of many 200 startups chosen for Trendster’s Startup Battlefield competitors in 2025 and received the Enterprise Stage pitch competitors at Trendster Disrupt.
“You should utilize an LLM to attempt to do deep analysis and get solutions to your questions, or you might use a agency that’s going to be actually costly,” Addy Graves, co-founder and CEO of Cashew, informed Trendster in describing the present market analysis trade. “Now there’s Cashew that exists within the center. It creates customized, recent knowledge to reply your query as an alternative of you simply utilizing an LLM that’s surfacing the identical recycled pool of knowledge that everyone’s discovering on the web.”
Graves has greater than a decade of market analysis expertise. The unique thought for Cashew was sparked by a difficulty she bumped into regularly: Shoppers wished full analysis initiatives — with real-world knowledge from people — accomplished inside just a few days.
For years, shortening that timeline whereas nonetheless producing the identical high quality of analysis outcomes wasn’t doable, Graves stated, as a result of the expertise to hurry up the method wasn’t prepared but.
“That was positively the aha second,” Graves stated. “And it wasn’t till the onset of AI that we have been truly capable of automate these processes that we use as researchers, greatest practices, these knowledge science-backed methodologies, in addition to the formatting of reviews that we all know that everyone needs.”
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
Bringing automation to the method additionally brings the associated fee down, which makes Cashew an possibility for small and medium-size manufacturers that wouldn’t have been capable of afford to work with a standard market analysis agency, Graves added.
Graves based Cashew in 2023 alongside Rose Wong, chief working officer, with an preliminary deal with client packaged items, particularly meals and beverage.
Graves stated she thinks Cashew can stand out within the more and more crowded AI advertising instruments class as a result of it isn’t totally automated. Every Cashew consumer will get recent human knowledge with every undertaking, which requires market analysis experience, Graves stated.
Cashew’s aggressive benefit might solely develop as the corporate matures. The corporate takes the entire real-world knowledge it collects from its shoppers’ initiatives, anonymizes it, and places it in a database, which might help add further proprietary knowledge to future analysis initiatives, too.
The corporate has raised C$1.5 million in pre-seed funding and is gearing as much as launch its seed spherical in early 2026 with the hope of elevating as much as $5 million, Graves stated. That capital will probably be put towards persevering with to develop the product’s tech.
Graves stated the corporate’s two important areas of focus heading into subsequent 12 months are growing the corporate’s presence within the U.S. and likewise working to construct up its B2B enterprise.
“The people who find themselves already shopping for analysis, that’s already a large class, however that doesn’t even embrace all of the folks that could possibly be shopping for analysis however simply can’t afford it or can’t do it proper now as a result of they don’t have the timelines,” Graves stated. “We’re truly creating this new class for entrepreneurs to achieve entry to solutions to those questions that they’ve had.”





