Strategic business decisions have traditionally been expensive and slow for a fundamental reason: they don’t happen enough.
This means companies lack both historical data to learn from, and access to experts who have seen similar cases. Bridgetown Research is changing that.
The AI decision science startup has raised $19 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed and Accel, with participation from a leading research university.
Bridgetown Research has developed AI agents that autonomously execute research. Most notable amongst these agents are voice bots trained to recruit and interview industry experts, gathering primary data that can be analyzed alongside alternative data sourced from their partners.
Founded by Harsh Sahai, who previously led machine learning teams at Amazon before leading strategy engagements at McKinsey & Co., Bridgetown Research was born from a simple observation: the majority of business analyses are a permutation of a small number of automatable tasks.
The founding team, comprising former professionals from McKinsey, Bain, Amazon, and leading tech startups, brings together extensive experience across strategy consulting and technology.
“We are excited to be a catalyst for change. We are working with multiple private equity firms, management consulting firms, and corporate teams to help make strategic decisions better and faster. This in turn is driving up demand for advisory and information services downstream.
“We enable $10+ of advisory and information services revenue for every $1 we make. Together with leading institutions, we’re building something bigger than ourselves—an ecosystem where everyone thrives,” commented Harsh Sahai, CEO & founder of Bridgetown Research.
While many AI solutions focus on searching and summarizing information using LLMs, real-world business decisions require much more than synthesising the open web.
They need proprietary data such as primary data from experts and customer surveys, along with frameworks to understand markets, what Harsh Sahai calls “ontologies”.
Moreover, outputs need to be repeatable and auditable for a business to use them to make decisions with tens of millions of dollars at stake. Bridgetown Research is the only player using agents to gather primary data and systematically find patterns in it to generate original insights.
“AI is causing widespread disruptions across many enterprise functions, and Bridgetown Research is riding that wave by assisting executives in making important strategic decisions. We are pleased to see Bridgetown serving several marquee customers, with users likening its platform to having a team of top-tier consultants at their fingertips.
“We are excited to partner with Harsh, who, with his background as an ace AI research scientist turned management consultant, blends a unique combination of skills and insight needed to imagine this whole new category of applied AI,” said Anagh Prasad, investor at Accel.
Bridgetown Research started with a focus on private equity deal screening diligence. Multiple top-tier PE & VC firms already use Bridgetown Research for deal screening and deeper commercial diligence.
They’re able to screen their pipeline much faster with initial analysis taking 24 hours instead of weeks without Bridgetown enabling teams to focus on actual decision-making instead of research and analysis.
For other customers, Bridgetown has enabled voice-of-customer conversations that cover hundreds of respondents in parallel, and within days.
Ishaan Preet Singh, investor at Lightspeed added “Companies are built on the quality of strategic decisions, and the research and analysis behind it. Bridgetown Research enables the smartest executives and investors to make these decisions with an order of magnitude more information, and at a pace that was earlier impossible. Harsh and Bridgetown are already creating immense value for their customers, but are still just scratching the surface of the leverage that AI can create.”
As global markets become increasingly complex, the demand for efficient and effective decision-making tools continues to rise.
With this funding round, Bridgetown Research plans to invest further in training its AI agents to perform a broader set of analyses across a broader range of domains, and deepening industry partnerships to enhance access to domain-specific intelligence.
