Elevating Insights with Researcher-Driven AI
Below is an open letter to the research community from Knit Co-founder & CEO, Aneesh Dhawan, published on July 31, 2025.
To our customers and the broader research community,
There’s a big shift underway in our industry.
Insights teams are under pressure — to deliver more, move faster, and do it all with fewer resources. Naturally, AI has become the tool of the moment. You’ve probably already used it in your work — maybe through Knit. It’s impressive. It’s evolving fast. And it’s here to stay.
But amid the hype, something important is being lost.
AI doesn’t make business decisions.
It doesn’t ignite change.
And it doesn’t tell stories that move people to act.
Researchers do.
At Knit, we believe in AI. We were early believers, launching one of the first AI-native research tools in 2022. But we’ve never believed AI replaces researchers. Instead, we see it as a powerful extension of human judgment, creativity, and insight.
That’s why we’re going all in on Researcher-Driven AI — a framework and product vision designed to center human expertise, not sideline it. It’s how we believe the next generation of research will be done.
We just raised $16.1M to build this future — not one where AI replaces people, but where AI + Human > AI alone.
Researcher-Driven AI is a model for collaboration between human researchers and intelligent AI agents — with you firmly in the driver’s seat.
You define the goals, frameworks, and context.
AI executes tasks like summarizing findings, surfacing themes, and generating first-draft narratives — fast.
You refine the story, elevate the insight, and make the research meaningful.
This approach doesn’t just optimize for speed. It empowers deeper thinking, better storytelling, and more influential insights.
It’s about elevating research from output to impact.
LLMs are powerful, but they’re generalists.
They don’t know your methodology, brand, or business context. Left alone, they produce generic, vague, or surface-level analysis.
Knit solves that by adding structured context: Your team’s preferences, goals, and frameworks wrap around the model. Our platform orchestrates AI agents to work with precision, grounded in your world.
The result?
Fast, scalable research that still feels deeply human.
AI becomes your research team’s multiplier — not its replacement.
AI-generated output on its own can feel close… but hollow. It lacks the texture, judgment, and resonance that only humans bring.
Without human oversight, research risks becoming meaningless at scale — fast and flawed. But with researchers continuously grounding, refining, and QA-ing AI’s work, the outcome is exponentially more powerful.
The future isn’t AI-only. It’s collaborative intelligence — where human insight keeps AI meaningful, and AI makes human expertise scalable.
Historically, research was reserved for the big bets: brand refreshes, product launches, category shifts. It was too slow and expensive to do more.
But Researcher-Driven AI changes that.
Research becomes fast by default and scalable by design. It no longer requires justification — it becomes embedded into every function: product, strategy, marketing, and beyond.
Insight stops being episodic. It is always on.
Research becomes the connective tissue of the business.
AI can synthesize. But storytelling — context-rich, audience-aware, emotionally resonant storytelling — remains uniquely human.
As analysis becomes more automated, the value shifts to interpretation and communication. Researchers aren’t just analysts; they’re translators of meaning.
Those who can turn findings into narratives that spark action will drive the most impact in their orgs.
Insight is only valuable when it drives understanding and change.
This vision shapes everything we’re building.
Unlike others racing to automate humans out of the process, we’re investing in human connection and creativity:
More Human Power: Every Knit project includes dedicated and expert in-house researchers — at no extra cost — to help you elevate your research.
Deeper Customization: Our platform learns how you work, framing research the way you would. It gets better with every project.
Faster from Survey to Story: New enhancements to our report-ready insights accelerate your path from raw data to strategic narrative.
Seamless Integrations: We’re expanding connections with the tools and outputs you already use — from data inputs to final report formats.
Global Scale, Local Relevance: Run research in 50+ countries and languages, with full contextual fidelity. No workarounds. Just insight.
Expanding Use Cases: From advanced quant to in-depth qual, segmentation to brand tracking — Knit is expanding to handle more of how you work.
We’re building this future with researchers, not just for them.
Join our Customer Advisory Board (some incredible teams already have).
Come to one of our in-person celebrations — we’ve got exciting events ahead.
And if you’re curious about how AI + human collaboration really works, check out the latest on what Knit’s building.
This is where the next generation of research begins.
Come build it with us.
With gratitude,
Aneesh Dhawan
CEO & Co-founder, Knit
