askpolly, an Ottawa-based AI-powered market research platform, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Differential Ventures, with participation from The 98 and Forum Ventures. The company plans to use the capital to expand product development and accelerate its go-to-market efforts across the United States.
The platform turns organic social media conversations into market research by filtering out bots, influencers and paid content, then creating representative samples aligned with census demographics. Users can define audiences, conduct research through a self-service interface and ask follow-up questions involving the same cohort. The company says its underlying data is refreshed every 24 hours.
askpolly is a product of Advanced Symbolics, an Ottawa company co-founded in 2015 by Erin Kelly and Kenton White. BDC reported that the self-service askpolly platform became available in October 2023 after the company developed Polly, its AI system for analysing and predicting market behaviour.
The company says the platform is used by more than 200 companies for applications including audience analysis and message testing. askpolly is also a Microsoft partner, with Azure IP co-sell eligible status, availability through Microsoft Marketplace and a Copilot-certified agent.
