Aaru, a start-up that provides near-instant customer research by using AI to simulate user behavior, has launched a series of pioneering efforts, according to three people familiar with the deal.

The funding round includes different valuation tiers, these people said. Although some justification was obtained for a $1 billion valuation, a lower valuation for other investors resulted in a mixed valuation of less than $1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. Multi-tier valuations within the same round are an unusual mechanism in Venture capital, but investors say they are more common among AI startups in today’s market. This approach allows the company to report a higher “headline” turnover while simultaneously offering better terms to certain investors.

AARU and Redpoy Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.

The exact size of the round is unknown, but one person said it was more than $50 million. Another source says that the startup is growing, but the annual turnover (arre) is still below $ 10 million.

Aaru was founded in March 2024 by Cameron Fink, Ned Koh, and John Kesler, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

The startup’s predictive model spawns thousands of AI agents that mimic human behavior using public and proprietary data. Aaru replaces traditional market research methods, which usually include surveys and focus groups, to use agents in specific demographics or geographies of future events.

The company’s customer partners include accenture, Hey, Intublic Groupand political campaigns. Last year, the AARU AI trading method accurately predicted the outcome of the New York Democratic Primary, according to Semaphore Reporting.

AARU competes with other social simulation startups, including CulturePulSE and Say itas well as startups that apply AI to ask people about their product preferences, such as labs, Keplerand at first.

The startup has raised an undisclosed amount of seed and pre-seed capital from investors, including a*, abstract efforts, crowdfunding, according to people briefed on Deal and Pitchbook data.