The primary research function that underpins investment decisions and corporate strategy runs on a pre-AI playbook: a handful of expert calls per project, scheduled through intermediaries, synthesized by junior analysts over the course of weeks. As market cycles compress and AI reshapes competitive dynamics across nearly every software category, that timeline has become a structural liability: insights arrive stale, sample sizes stay small, and the cost base locks out teams running high-velocity diligence. Qualitate has built an AI-native primary intelligence platform that closes that gap, deploying an AI Moderator that runs thousands of structured expert discussions each month and converts them into quantified, time-series data covering more than 10,000 public and private companies. The platform delivers custom studies in three to seven business days at roughly one-third the cost of traditional expert networks, and its structured transcript library now exceeds 350,000 minutes of expert conversations, with 10,000 more added every week that continuously train the moderator. That approach has attracted six of the top 15 private equity firms by AUM, along with large multi-manager hedge funds, private credit teams, and publicly traded enterprises that run channel checks, win/loss analysis, and competitive intelligence workflows on the platform.
AlleyWatch sat down with Qualitate Founder and CEO Sagar Kadakia to learn more about the business, its strategic plans, recent funding round, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $7M in seed funding, announced April 21, 2026. IA Ventures and Crew Capital co-led the round, with participation from angel investors Tony Berkman, Travis May, Matt Levin, and advisors Alex Zukin and Brian Lichtenberger.
Tell us about the product or service that Qualitate offers.
Qualitate is an AI-native primary intelligence platform for investment and strategy teams.
Our AI Moderator proactively conducts thousands of expert discussions each month with senior decision-makers, capturing forward-looking strategy, purchasing plans, competitive displacement, and ROI signals. We turn those conversations into quantified, time-series outputs tracking over 10,000 public and private companies, all queryable in natural language.
Customers use Qualitate two ways. They subscribe to the platform for continuous market and company intelligence. They also commission custom projects, where our AI Moderator runs 20 to 25 in-depth interviews in 3 to 7 business days, at roughly one-third the cost of traditional expert networks.
What inspired the start of Qualitate?
In 2023, it became clear that AI had changed what was possible in terms of accessing primary intelligence. Structured voice conversations with experts could run at a speed and scale no human-moderated process could match. That’s what Qualitate was built to do.
How is Qualitate different?
- Panel, technology, insights, and distribution are all vertically integrated at Qualitate. Every new discussion trains the moderator and improves the next one.
- Every Qualitate interview is like one expert talking to another. Our AI Moderator is trained on hundreds of thousands of minutes of real expert conversations and continuously refreshed with real-time intelligence across thousands of companies and markets. High-quality answers come from high-quality questions. High-quality questions come from continuous intelligence. That data loop is our moat.
- Every discussion in our library follows a consistent structure, so qualitative data becomes time-series data. Customers can track vendor displacement, pricing changes, and feature adoption quantitatively, over time.
What market does Qualitate target and how big is it?
Qualitate serves investment firms and corporations. That spans private equity, private credit, hedge funds, venture capital, growth equity, and enterprises (competitive strategy, product marketing, corporate strategy, and market intelligence). Any organization that makes high-stakes decisions on shifting markets.
The addressable spend sits across traditional expert networks, analyst/market research, consulting engagements, and internal analyst headcount. It’s a multi-billion dollar category, and most of the spend is locked in formats built for a pre-AI era.
What’s your business model?
Two revenue streams.
Annual platform subscriptions give customers continuous access to our structured transcript library, dashboards, and natural-language search across 10,000+ companies.
Custom projects let customers commission targeted studies like client diligence, competitive sprints, win/loss, and churn work, all delivered through the AI Moderator. Both streams are priced for enterprise.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Our customers use Qualitate to make faster, cheaper, higher-conviction decisions.
We doubled revenue in back-to-back quarters, even as the market slowed. Overall, we’ve grown revenue 30x over the last 12 months with 100% customer renewals and over 200% NRR. We more than doubled ACV in the past six months.
Demand for primary data is at an all-time high. When markets tighten, investors need edge. Publicly available data is commoditized. Alpha lives in primary data, and no one builds it better than Qualitate does.
We own our panel, our technology, and our distribution, which keeps unit economics tight and the cost base predictable. We run the company to be capital-efficient through any cycle.
What was the funding process like?
The round came together faster than we expected. We had meaningful customer revenue, clear unit economics, and a product roadmap that was already shipping, so the conversations were more about partner fit than persuasion.
We prioritized investors with deep conviction in AI-native infrastructure and enterprise workflows. IA Ventures and Crew Capital both brought that, along with experience working with founders building long-arc category companies.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The hardest part was staying disciplined about who we let into the round and at what size. We had more inbound interest than allocation, and keeping the cap table clean mattered more than maximizing the headline number.
The second challenge was explaining the category. Qualitate created a new market. Survey platforms, expert networks, transcript libraries, and bespoke research firms each solve a piece of primary research. We consolidated those methods into one platform and created a new category: continuous expert intelligence. Early conversations with investors were about landing that framing before the numbers.
The hardest part was staying disciplined about who we let into the round and at what size. We had more inbound interest than allocation, and keeping the cap table clean mattered more than maximizing the headline number.
The second challenge was explaining the category. Qualitate created a new market. Survey platforms, expert networks, transcript libraries, and bespoke research firms each solve a piece of primary research. We consolidated those methods into one platform and created a new category: continuous expert intelligence. Early conversations with investors were about landing that framing before the numbers.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
- Customer quality. We’ve signed 6 of the top 15 private equity firms by AUM, top private credit teams, large publicly traded enterprises, and multi-manager hedge funds already run primary research workflows on Qualitate.
- Our data moat, with 350,000+ minutes of structured expert discussions and 10,000 new minutes added every week. Every discussion trains the moderator and powers future custom projects.
- Thesis fit. Our investors have spent their careers studying AI infrastructure, data products, and enterprise workflows.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
The funding accelerates Qualitate’s plans to build AI agents that take a research question from first ask to final recommendation and embed directly into the tools our customers already use.
We’re expanding our sector coverage while also quickly growing the team.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Own the parts of your stack that compound. Our panel, infrastructure, and transcript library aren’t outsourced. Each new customer and each new discussion makes the next one better. That’s what you can’t replicate with more headcount or more ad spend.
Listen to customers. Our product roadmap comes from real customer feedback.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Qualitate is becoming an always-on primary intelligence platform. The agentic system we’re building runs continuously, detecting events, interviewing experts, analyzing results, and delivering executive-ready output without manual orchestration.
The near-term work is turning that vision into product updates. Embedded workflows inside customer tools, broader sector coverage, and more frequent industry studies.
What’s your favorite spring destination in and around the city?
Central Park.
