The Parisian startup joins a market where Outset, GetWhy and Listen Labs automate the conduct of interviews and the analysis of responses. These platforms also seek to make lessons available as decisions are made. Established institutes and major software publishers are themselves taking a stand on this issue.
Eight weeks to get consumer insights, then a decision that can’t always wait. This shift constitutes the starting point of Verso. “We now access consumer insights almost instantly, where it took us 8 weeks with traditional approaches, without sacrificing quality,” says the head of international studies at Ferrero, one of the more than 30 user companies announced by the young company, alongside Orange and Michelin.
The comparison describes a customer experience, the type of study and the evaluation protocol of which are not specified. It nevertheless sheds light on the need met by a new generation of players: bringing together the collection of opinions, their analysis and their use by marketing, product or innovation teams.
With Verso, founded in 2025, this movement takes a French form. The platform conducts interviews with real consumers, then stores the results in a knowledge base that teams can query. The ambition concerns the place of studies in the company: to produce lessons more quickly and allow them to circulate beyond the first decision for which they were collected.
Bringing design, interviews and analysis together
Verso covers the main stages of a qualitative study, the client specifies the question to be resolved, an interview guide is prepared, then participants are recruited through panels or the advertiser’s customer base. An AI agent conducts individual exchanges by video or voice, with reminders adapted to the responses. The platform then summarizes the comments collected and allows them to be consulted.
The uses presented range from testing a product concept or packaging to evaluating an advertising message, including understanding purchasing motivations. Qualitative research here aims to explore the reasons for a choice, the reservations or expectations that closed responses may leave aside.
The integration of the different stages makes it possible to reduce the successive operations of preparation, collection and restitution. The ability to conduct multiple interviews simultaneously also changes the scale at which this research can be conducted. Verso claims lessons obtained approximately ten times faster, for a quarter of the cost of a traditional institute, by interviewing fifteen times more consumers.
The methodological responsibility remains. In an interview with Market Research News in March 2026, Lydia Bellahouel explained that she participated in the framing of the studies with independent specialists. It also highlighted the possibility of returning to the verbatims, transcriptions and videos on which the conclusions are based. This traceability allows the client to examine a summary and discuss its interpretation.
Consulting experience converted into product
The project comes from the meeting between experience of large companies and technological development skills. A graduate of HEC, Lydia Bellahouel spent seven years at BCG, where she worked on marketing transformation and innovation, particularly with consumer brands.
“At BCG, I have seen large groups miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year because they did not have access to actionable consumer insights when making decisions,” explains the co-founder and CEO.
Camille Epitalon, holder of a double degree from Polytechnique and HEC Paris, brings experience acquired at CO2 AI in product development and AI systems.
Support from Hexa, whose model combines the creation of startups and investment, also places Verso in a B2B software construction approach. The company must now demonstrate that its first uses can become regular practices among its customers.
An already international competitive field
Verso is entering a market where several companies offer AI-driven interviews. In the United States, Outset, based in San Francisco, combines adaptive video, voice or text exchanges, recruiting tools and automated analysis. Its offering covers both the exploration of expectations and concept and usage testing.
In Denmark, GetWhy brings together study design, recruitment, video interviews and feedback. The company combines this technology with research expertise and targets major brands in particular. The emergence of this market therefore concerns several European centers.
Listen Labs, developed in San Francisco, also automates study preparation, interviews and synthesis. Salesforce announced an agreement to acquire it on September 29.
Bringing the lessons to life after the study
Verso’s proposal continues after the restitution. The company builds consumer personas enriched by successive studies: representations of segments which bring together their expectations, their motivations and their reactions. Teams can thus compare segments and monitor the evolution of attitudes.
This continuity could expand uses. Research commissioned for a product launch can shed light on a subsequent communication question, if the information collected is adapted to this new question. The history then becomes a resource that can be consulted by teams who did not necessarily participate in the initial study. This extension ties in with the challenges of transforming relationship marketing in retail, where customer knowledge must be able to guide operational decisions.
The value of this base, however, depends on the context it preserves. A response was obtained on a given date, from a specific profile, on a market and under specific conditions. These elements must accompany the conclusions to prevent an old or local observation from being used too widely.
Verso plans to add quantitative data and insights from social media conversations. Their comparison can enrich the reading of a subject, provided that the differences between the populations questioned and the situations observed are preserved. Interpreting an interview, a survey and a public comment requires knowing what each of these sources actually allows us to establish.
Data which must also become usable by AI agents
The roadmap also provides access for AI agents integrated into business processes. These systems could consult the consumer base to carry out an initial analysis before a team decides on a message or product proposal.
This perspective increases the requirement for traceability: a recommendation should make it possible to find the responses that support it and to recognize the limits of their scope. It also involves specifying the situations in which the available data do not allow a conclusion to be drawn.
The quality of the data collection therefore remains decisive, and a greater number of interviews does not in itself correct unsuitable recruitment or a leading question. In her March interview, Lydia Bellahouel presented the analysis of non-verbal, intonations and hesitations as a work in progress.
Founded in 2025 by Lydia Bellahouel and Camille Epitalon and supported by Hexa, Verso announces seed funding of $6 million, or approximately €5.4 million at the ECB reference rate of October 8, 2026. The round is led by Angular Ventures, with the participation of 100in, Kima Ventures, Olympe Capital, Sharpstone Capital and a group of business angels. The funds are to finance the integration of new data sources and access for AI agents, international expansion, particularly in the United States, as well as recruitment in engineering and commercial functions.
