San Francisco, July 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The market research boom is creating an unexpected casualty: the agencies themselves. In an industry where clients expect faster turnarounds, competitive pricing, and diverse capabilities, agencies are turning down work – not for lack of interest, but because outdated operational systems keep them from meeting client expectations. Metaforms, a startup born from this bottleneck, is helping research teams scale without burning out. Today, the company announces a $9 million Series A to expand its AI infrastructure platform and accelerate adoption across the $130 billion global research industry.
The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India), with participation from Nexus Venture Partners and Together Fund. It brings Metaforms’ total funding to just over $10 million and will be used to grow the team, expand into new workflows like report generation and voice-based research, and deepen integrations with tools like Decipher, SPSS, and Confirmit.
Metaforms cofounders Arjun S and Akshat Tyagi.
"We’re thrilled to partner with Akshat and Arjun as they reimagine what a market research agency could look like in an AI-first world. Metaforms is scaling rapidly, by enabling some of the largest research agencies globally to automate workflows such as survey programming and data processing through their suite of AI agents." Shailendra Singh, MD, Peak XV
When a global brand like a shoe company wants to make critical decisions about how to market it’s new pair of shoes in a geography it has never ventured into before. It engages a market research agency to figure out lifestyle habits and cultural perceptions of a population. For this the agency has to recruit a target population, design a research study, convert the survey questions into an online link, clean the data for fraud, do in-person interviews, combine all the data to finally make a presentation.
Metaforms builds AI agents designed to work within research agencies’ existing workflows, automating the manual processes that limit capacity and erode margins. Instead of replacing research expertise, the platform acts as a force multiplier: turning questionnaires into survey code, flagging bad data before it breaks a project, coordinating panel vendors, and tracking quotas across complex multi-country studies.
Survey programming dashboard in Metaforms.
For many agencies, this means the difference between turning away work and scaling up confidently.
Metaforms has been incredibly successful thanks to their uniquely thoughtful approach to modernizing research operations—embedding seamlessly into the workflows, tools, and platforms that researchers and agencies already use. I’m excited to continue supporting the team as they build on that momentum with this Series A— Jonathan Tice, GTM Consultant [Prev: Chief Customer Officer, Forsta]
Founded in 2022 by Akshat Tyagi and Arjun S, Metaforms was born out of a personal pain point. As early-stage founders, they struggled to access professional market research. The problem wasn’t demand – it was bandwidth. So Akshat and Arjun set out to build software that gave agencies a way to do more with what they already have.
“Our goal is simple: help great research teams spend less time firefighting and more time doing the work that actually matters,” said Akshat Tyagi, co-founder and CEO of Metaforms. “When you automate the grunt work, you make high-quality research more accessible to more companies.”
Since launching commercially just six months ago, Metaforms has signed four of the world's top twenty research agencies, including Strat7, one of the largest market research agencies globally. The platform now processes over 1,000 surveys per month, and serves Fortune 500 companies. Every customer that started with a single AI agent has expanded to adopt additional ones, achieving a 100% expansion rate.
Bidding management with Metaforms.
“Metaforms is a breakout example of the India-to-global play in AI,” said Manav Garg, Co-founder and managing partner at Together Fund. “They’re not just automating tasks — they’re rebuilding research infrastructure for the modern era. With their early traction across global agencies, Akshat and Arjun are showing what’s possible when deep customer empathy meets technical ambition.”
That accessibility is already changing the industry. By compressing turnaround times and reducing operational costs, Metaforms enables agencies to serve clients they would otherwise turn away, from early-stage startups testing their first ideas to global brands launching multi-country trackers.
“Our partnership has delivered strong ROl, thanks to Metaforms' exceptional service and prompt support” added Tabita Razaila Head of operations, Strat7
"They're solving a major pain point for the entire industry. That focus and ability to deeply understand customer needs and address that using genetic AI is the hallmark of Metaforms team. We are thrilled to back Akshat and Arjun in their journey of building a remarkable company!”, said Jishnu Bhattacharjee and Arjun Gandhi, Nexus Venture Partners.
Looking ahead, Metaforms plans to triple its team and continue expanding the breadth of its agent capabilities. Voice research, automated report generation, and expanded language support are all on the roadmap. The long-term vision is to process over 100,000 surveys per year and make professional-grade research available to every business that needs it.
“When research agencies grow, better business decisions get made,” added Akshat Tyagi. “We’re not here to replace the humans in the loop. We’re here to give them leverage.”
Media images can be found here.
About Metaforms
Metaforms is the AI platform that helps market research agencies operate smarter and win more business. Our AI Agents augment research teams’ work output across survey programming, data processing, bidding management, and voice research; enabling them to handle exponentially more projects while maintaining quality.
For further information please contact the Metaforms press office on hello@metaforms.ai
