Ideally was founded in 2023 in Auckland by research technology business TRA Labs and innovation and venture studio Previously Unavailable. Clients include Google, Asahi, Revlon, Omnicom and KFC.

The $10m ($16m NZD) funding round, led by Shearwater Capital with participation from Altered Capital, Icehouse Ventures and Ecliptic VC, will support Ideally’s US expansion and continued development of its AI-led insights platform.

Ideally’s platform, used by marketers, strategists and creatives, gathers responses from consumers overnight across around 30 countries and compiles them into a dashboard. AI is used to identify patterns, segment audiences and generate follow-up questions based on what consumers say.

The company is also launching a new tool, Ideally Canvas, in the US for the first time. It offers  continuously updated consumer insights for the creative process.

The US launch of Ideally Canvas follows the opening of a new office, led by Joshua Nu’u-Steele, co-founder and chief revenue officer.

James Donald, chief executive of Ideally, said: "The best creative work has always come from genuinely understanding real people, but that understanding has been locked behind months of waiting and six-figure budgets. That world is over.”

Nu’u-Steele said: “Every marketing leader I talk to in the US has the same problem: their insights team is stretched thin, their timelines are impossible, and they're making million-dollar decisions on data that’s already six months old. That’s not a research problem, it’s a business problem.”

Nu’u-Steele added that the platform offers brands “a faster, more reliable way to understand their customers and act on it”.