Cookiy AI, a Silicon Valley–based leader in qualitative AI solutions, has reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) just six months since its founding without spending a penny on advertising. In an era where AI startups are under pressure to prove product-market fit, this milestone highlights Cookiy’s competency in delivering innovative solutions and executing effective go-to-market strategies.

The platform’s ability to maintain deep, context-driven insights while scaling research has attracted a broad user base, including product managers, insights teams, marketers, and developers. These users rely on Cookiy AI to automate and scale qualitative research, unlocking faster and more actionable insights without sacrificing the human touch.

A key driver of this growth has been the early support and strategic foresight of Haina Xu, a prominent Angel Investor at Etna Capital. Recognizing the potential of empathic, agentic AI in the enterprise sector, her investment and mentorship helped Cookiy AI bypass traditional advertising and gain rapid global adoption.

A Core Focus on Empathic AI-Led Interviews

Building on its fundamental features of Discussion Guide Creation, Automated Respondent Recruitment, Real-Time AI-Led Interviews, and Rapid Reporting with Data Visualization, Cookiy has introduced several new capabilities to enhance the depth and quality of research while staying true to its core competency of human-emphatic, AI-led interviews.

  • Observer Mode: Mimicking the one-way mirror used in conventional research methodologies, this mode allows human researchers to observe, monitor, and adjust AI's moderation without interrupting the flow of the conversation
  • Instruct Mode: Enables the AI to learn and adapt to the researcher’s unique interviewing style, aligning more closely with their methodology
  • Emotional & Facial Expression Analysis: Captures deeper emotional insights, using AI-driven facial and sentiment analysis to enrich participant responses with added emotional depth

These new features help streamline qualitative research, maintaining deep, context-driven insights while preserving the nuance and emotional depth of human interaction.

Cookiy’s executive leaders credit their strategic investor network as a key to their success. “Achieving $1M ARR in six months without ad spend is a huge milestone, and Haina Xu’s involvement was crucial,” said Davin Dong, Founder & CEO. “Her ability to identify groundbreaking AI technologies and make high-level strategic introductions gave us the leverage to dominate quickly.”

Industry Recognition and Growth

“It’s not just another AI tool. What’s surprising is that Cookiy AI understands context and can ask appropriate follow-up questions,” a capability praised by Samsung insights experts at IIEX APAC in February 2026. Cookiy’s booth attracted significant attention from global leaders like Kantar, BCG, Shiseido, Unilever, and Samsung, all seeking scalable, AI-driven research solutions. This growing engagement underscores the rising demand for efficient, cost-effective qualitative research, positioning Cookiy AI as a leader in the space.

Building on its rapid growth, Cookiy AI is expanding its impact through high-profile events, including GDC Week 2026 in San Francisco, a self-hosted 100-person gathering in Palo Alto, and SUCCEET 2026 in Frankfurt and eTail Asia 2026 in Singapore, further solidifying its global presence in AI-driven user research across multiple industries and use cases.

About Cookiy AI

Cookiy AI is the world’s first agentic AI platform for qualitative research, enabling teams to automate adaptive, real-time AI-led interviews that deliver faster, smarter, and decision-ready insights at scale. The company raised an oversubscribed $7+ million pre-seed round, backed by Liquid2, Converge, GoAhead, Etna Capital and UpHonest.

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