Aaru

Aaru builds large-scale behavior simulations that predict how real populations will respond to a product, price, message or strategy before a company commits to it. The platform generates populations of AI agents - roughly 10,000 per audience - grounded in public datasets such as census and labor statistics, licensed private behavioral data such as transaction and search patterns, and the customer's own context, then runs hypothetical scenarios against them. It is positioned as a replacement for surveys and focus groups, on the argument that simulated behavior predicts action better than self-reported preference. Founded in March 2024 by Cameron Fink, Ned Koh and John Kessler, the company operates from New York and Singapore and counts Accenture, EY and Interpublic Group among its customers.

Populations are trained simultaneously at the individual and aggregate level so trait relationships are preserved rather than sampled independently, and results are validated against real-world outcomes rather than against survey answers - an EY engagement reproduced six months of global wealth research in a day at 0.90 median correlation, and the company's agent-based polling called the 2024 New York Democratic primary.