Alfred Wahlforss, founder of Listen Labs, was desperate to hire over 100 engineers amid fierce competition from tech giants. With only a $5,000 budget, he placed a billboard in San Francisco displaying strings of random numbers—actually AI tokens. Decoding them led to a coding challenge: build an algorithm acting as a digital bouncer for Berlin's exclusive Berghain nightclub. Thousands attempted, 430 solved it, and some were hired; the winner flew to Berlin.
That viral stunt paid off. Listen Labs has now raised $69 million in Series B funding led by Ribbit Capital, with Evantic, Sequoia Capital, Conviction, and Pear VC participating. The round values the company at $500 million, bringing total funding to $100 million. In nine months, annualized revenue grew 15x to eight figures, and the platform has conducted over one million AI-powered interviews.
"When you obsess over customers, everything else follows," Wahlforss said. "Teams that use Listen bring the customer into every decision, from marketing to product, and when the customer is delighted, everyone is."
Listen Labs aims to fix broken market research. Traditional surveys offer statistical precision but miss nuance, while human interviews provide depth but don't scale. Listen's AI researcher finds participants, conducts open-ended video conversations, and delivers insights in hours. The platform works in four steps: users create a study with AI assistance, Listen recruits from its global network of 30 million, an AI moderator conducts interviews, and results are packaged into reports with key themes and highlight reels.
"In a survey, you can kind of guess what you should answer," Wahlforss noted. "Open-ended responses generate much more honesty."
Confronting rampant fraud in the $140 billion market research industry, Listen built a "quality guard" that cross-references LinkedIn profiles with video responses and flags suspicious patterns. Emeritus, an online education company, saw survey fraud drop from 20% to nearly zero. Microsoft, Sweetgreen, and Chubbies use Listen for faster insights—Microsoft collected global customer stories in a day instead of six to eight weeks for its 50th anniversary. Chubbies achieved a 24x increase in youth research participation, uncovering product issues like scratchy shorts liners that led to a blockbuster redesign.
"Essentially, surveys give you false precision because people end up answering the same question," Wahlforss explained. "You can't get the outliers. People are actually not honest on surveys."
With the new funding, Listen Labs plans to expand its AI capabilities and global panel, making customer insights accessible to every team.