Based in San Francisco, Listen Labs was established in April 2025. In September this year, Salesforce announced plans to acquire the business.

Listen Labs started out by using an AI ‘interviewer’ tool to conduct surveys, and now also uses AI agents to autonomously design studies and recruit participants.

The new ‘Listen Twins’ are AI models of people in a client’s target audience, based on data from interviews.

Unlike AI personas, digital twins are designed to be real-time replicas of a system based on first-party data. Personas are representations of a customer segment built from generalised data.

For Listen Labs’ new offer, customer teams will first define their target audience and the company will recruit matching participants from its network, conduct interviews, and build the twins. Companies can then ask their own panel of twins a question.

Listen Labs said the digital twins can be used to inform ‘every day’ business questions – including which campaign concepts to run, gauging reactions to announcements or exploring what customers might pay more for – but said a full research study is still required for higher-level decisions.

Alfred Wahlforss, co-founder and chief executive, Listen Labs, said: “The ability to predict how people will react is a powerful tool. So, we’re building this responsibly.”