Minds

What Minds does

Minds is a synthetic market research platform operated by Art of X UG (haftungsbeschränkt), a Berlin-based German limited liability company co-founded by Alexander Doudkin (CEO) and Friedrich von Borries (Managing Director). The platform enables users to create AI-driven customer personas ("Minds") and reusable synthetic audiences for research studies, replacing traditional panel research with same-day, on-demand AI simulation. It targets marketing teams, agencies, product teams, founders, and SMBs across verticals including retail/FMCG, ecommerce, healthcare, and financial services, with horizontal segmentation across eight documented use-case segments.

The platform is built on Minds PRISM™, a proprietary synthetic research infrastructure that applies psychological models for personality, values, motivations, and buying behaviour to AI personas. PRISM uses a three-tier data anchoring approach combining primary research, behavioural science models, and validation against official statistics from the US Census, BLS, BEA, CDC, Eurostat, Destatis, Statistics Canada, ECB, and World Bank. The system claims 85-95% correlation with traditional in-person consumer panels and can generate up to 10,000 simulated responses per hour. The technology stack leverages third-party LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI), web retrieval tools (Tavily, Firecrawl, Apify), and supports multimodal inputs including text, images, and voice via ElevenLabs/Fish Audio with transcription via Deepgram. Developer access is available through a REST API and Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.

Minds operates a tiered SaaS revenue model: Free (limited to 3 panel answers per month), Individual ($39/month), Team ($79/seat/month with a 3-seat minimum), and custom Enterprise. The company also generates revenue through Marketplace Groups (paid add-ons with creator revenue share via Stripe Connect). Distribution combines product-led growth via the free tier, enterprise field sales with 2-week pilots, and developer-focused API/MCP access. The company maintains GDPR-compliant EU data residency (DigitalOcean Frankfurt, Supabase Stockholm), is pursuing SOC 2 Type II, and holds ESOMAR Corporate membership. Minds was rebranded from "Sparks" in 2024, has 1-10 employees, and shows no disclosed external funding, suggesting the company is currently bootstrapped.

Name

Minds

Legal name

Art of X UG (haftungsbeschränkt)

Website

https://getminds.ai

Company type

Private

Founded year

2025

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Minds is a synthetic market research platform that creates AI-driven customer personas and reusable synthetic audiences, replacing traditional panel research with same-day validated insights for marketing teams, agencies, product teams, and SMBs across multiple verticals globally.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Synthetic Market Research Software

NAICS

Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910), Marketing Consulting Services (541613)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Behavioral & Neuroscience Research (Biometrics, Eye-Tracking, Neuromarketing) (MPAAALAN)

akta.pro secondary industry

Model Hosting, Serving & Inference Platforms (HDAAACAB)

Keywords

• Synthetic market research
• AI persona platform
• Customer research automation
• Audience simulation software
• Research-as-a-service

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Subscription Plans: Tiered subscription model (Free, Individual $39/mo, Team $79/seat/mo, Enterprise custom) with recurring monthly/annual billing. Free tier generates leads; Individual/Team tiers drive self-serve revenue; Enterprise tier drives high-value contracts.
2. Usage-based Credits: Synthetic response volume bundled per plan tier (60-4,000 responses/month) with overage consumption model for Team seats. Enterprise plans offer custom response volumes.
3. Freemium Entry: Free tier with limited usage (3 panel answers/month, up to 60 synthetic responses) to drive adoption and trial before conversion to paid Individual/Team plans.
4. Marketplace Groups: Public, verified, and partner-branded Marketplace Groups offered as paid add-ons with per-seat, per-group, or custom charges. Revenue share model with creators through Stripe Connect.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Minds operates a synthetic market research platform that lets users create AI-driven personas (Minds) and reusable synthetic audiences to run qualitative interviews, questionnaires, concept tests, and message tests in a single Study workspace. The platform is powered by its proprietary Minds PRISM™ engine, which anchors persona responses in primary data, behavioral models, and official statistical sources, and is delivered through tiered subscriptions plus API and MCP access.

Product overview

Minds is a synthetic market research platform built by Art of X UG (haftungsbeschränkt), offering a unified product for creating AI-driven customer personas and research panels. The core platform is powered by Minds PRISM technology and supports four panel types: customer, client, user, and expert. The platform is structured around the main Minds Platform with multiple pricing tiers (Free, Individual at $39/month, Team at $79/seat/month, and custom Enterprise), each enabling varying scales of synthetic response generation. Additional offerings include Public Audiences (pre-built synthetic panels grounded in official statistics from census bureaus and statistical agencies), The Spark Effect (multi-agent AI creative diversity feature), and developer access via the Minds API and MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration available on paid plans. The platform is GDPR-compliant with EU data residency options.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Minds Platform Cloud SaaS platform for creating AI-driven personas (Minds) and reusable synthetic audiences to run qualitative interviews, structured questionnaires, concept tests, and message tests in a single Study workspace, with search, projects, and multi-persona replies for marketing, product, and research teams.
• Minds PRISM™ Proprietary synthetic persona research engine that applies three-tier data anchoring (primary data, behavioral models, official statistics validation) to generate AI personas with validated 80-95% correlation to real human research, powering all Minds operations.
• Public Audiences Pre-built reusable synthetic target audiences (e.g., Gen-Z urban shoppers, Millennial parents, enterprise buyers) with demographic, psychographic, and behavioral grounding, so users can start a Study without rebuilding the sample.
• The Spark Effect Multi-agent AI capability that combines multiple Minds for parallel response generation across audiences, producing creative diversity and surfacing patterns, outliers, and tensions across persona segments.
• Minds API REST API for programmatic access to the Minds platform, supporting Minds, panels, knowledge, chat, and integrations functionality, available on Individual and Team plans.
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) Integration MCP server integration that allows Minds to be invoked from MCP-compatible AI clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.), included in Individual and Team plans for tool-augmented research workflows.
• Marketplace Groups Marketplace of public, verified, and partner-branded synthetic audience groups sold as paid add-ons (per-seat, per-group, or custom), with revenue share paid to creators through Stripe Connect.

Quantifiable outcome

• Reduces research timelines from 3-4 weeks to same-day
• +4 more outcomes

Segments8 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

AI capability9 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered minor.

• bayern designminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2026Organizational partnership/membership with bayern design, a Bavarian design promotion agency. Listed in footer as a partner association.
• ESOMARminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2026Corporate membership in ESOMAR (European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research). Provides industry legitimacy and connection to traditional market research community.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Prolific: Human participant recruitment platform for academic and commercial research. Competes indirectly for the same research workflow budget by providing traditional human panels at higher quality and faster recruitment than legacy vendors.
• Qualtrics: Enterprise experience management platform with deep survey, panel, and analytics capabilities. Competes for the same insights and research budget inside large enterprises, with brand health and customer experience modules that overlap Minds' use cases.
• Attest: Consumer research platform offering brand tracking, audience research, and concept testing with on-demand panels. Comparable enterprise research workflow and comparable SMB-to-enterprise buyer base, competing for the same research budget allocation.
• Suzy: Enterprise consumer research platform combining a proprietary panel with rapid insights tools. Comparable target buyer (enterprise insights and marketing teams) and competes for budget allocated against traditional market research vendors.

Direct peers

• Remesh: AI-augmented qualitative research platform that enables live panel conversations and message testing. Comparable methodology for structured audience research with hybrid human/AI workflows targeting enterprise insights teams.
• Synthetic Users: Synthetic user research platform for product and UX teams. Directly comparable offering for concept testing and persona-based user research, competing for the same product manager and UX researcher segments.
• Aaru: Synthetic market research platform targeting Fortune 500 enterprise buyers with AI personas. Most directly comparable competitor in synthetic research methodology, with a contrasting enterprise-first positioning rather than Minds' PLG-to-enterprise wedge.

Emerging players

• Chatbase: Custom AI chatbot builder that allows teams to create conversational agents grounded in their own data. Adjacent in the AI persona category and competes for some of the same marketing and product team use cases around customer simulation.
• UXPressia: Persona and customer journey mapping platform serving product, UX, and marketing teams. Comparable buyer segment and adjacent persona-building use case, though centered on static persona artifacts rather than interactive AI-driven research.
• Delphi: AI persona platform that enables experts and creators to scale themselves through conversational clones. Adjacent in the AI-persona category with overlap in expert panel and customer avatar use cases, though focused on individual creator monetization rather than market research.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/mindsai_co

Compliance5 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Minds