Bridgetown Research, a startup building AI Agents for VC and Private Equity, has raised $19 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed and Accel, with participation from a leading research university. The startup is addressing a fundamental challenge in strategic business decisions: they're expensive and slow because they don't happen enough, leaving companies without sufficient historical data or experienced experts.
Bridgetown Research has developed AI Agents that autonomously execute research. Most notable amongst these agents are voice bots trained to recruit and interview industry experts, gathering primary data that can be analyzed alongside alternative data sourced from their partners.
Founded by Harsh Sahai, who previously led machine learning teams at Amazon before leading strategy engagements at McKinsey & Co., Bridgetown Research was born from a simple observation: the majority of business analyses are a permutation of a small number of automatable tasks. The founding team, comprising former professionals from McKinsey, Bain, Amazon, and leading tech startups, brings together extensive experience across strategy consulting and technology.
"We are excited to be a catalyst for change," commented Harsh Sahai, CEO and founder of Bridgetown Research. "We are working with multiple private equity firms, management consulting firms, and corporate teams to help make strategic decisions better and faster. This in turn is driving up demand for advisory and information services downstream. We enable over $10 of advisory and information services revenue for every $1 we make. Together with leading institutions, we're building something bigger than ourselves—an ecosystem where everyone thrives."
While many AI solutions focus on searching and summarizing information using LLMs, real-world business decisions require much more than synthesizing the open web. They need proprietary data such as primary data from experts and customer surveys, along with frameworks to understand markets, what Sahai calls "ontologies." Moreover, outputs need to be repeatable and auditable for a business to use them to make decisions with tens of millions of dollars at stake. Bridgetown Research is the only player using agents to gather primary data and systematically find patterns in it to generate original insights.
"AI is causing widespread disruptions across many enterprise functions, and Bridgetown Research is riding that wave by assisting executives in making important strategic decisions," said Anagh Prasad, Investor at Accel. "We are pleased to see Bridgetown serving several marquee customers, with users likening its platform to having a team of top-tier consultants at their fingertips. We are excited to partner with Harsh, who, with his background as an ace AI research scientist turned management consultant, blends a unique combination of skills and insight needed to imagine this whole new category of applied AI."
The startup started with a focus on private equity deal screening diligence. Multiple top-tier PE & VC firms already use Bridgetown Research for deal screening and deeper commercial diligence. They're able to screen their pipeline much faster with initial analysis taking 24 hours instead of weeks without Bridgetown, enabling teams to focus on actual decision making instead of research and analysis. For other customers, Bridgetown has enabled voice of customer conversations that cover hundreds of respondents in parallel, and within days.
"Companies are built on the quality of strategic decisions, and the research and analysis behind it," added Ishaan Preet Singh, Investor at Lightspeed. "[Bridgetown Research] enables the smartest executives and investors to make these decisions with an order of magnitude more information, and at a pace that was earlier impossible. Harsh and Bridgetown are already creating immense value for their customers, but are still just scratching the surface of the leverage that AI can create."
