London-based Artificial Societies, a synthetic persona platform enabling AI-powered simulations of human behaviour, has raised €4.5 million in combined pre-Seed and Seed funding.
The latest Seed round of €2.8 million was led by Point72 Ventures, while the earlier €1.7 million pre-Seed round saw participation from Kindred Capital, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Ventures Together, Icehouse Ventures, Multimodal Ventures, Carya Venture Partners, Transpose Platform, Taro Fukuyama, and multiple angels with links to Sequoia Capital Scout, Figma, Prolific, and Google DeepMind.
“We started Artificial Societies in late 2024; joined YC in January; launched our first demos in March. And earlier this month, we released our flagship social simulation platform for anyone to sign up and use – slowly, steadily, we are building this wild dream into reality,” said Co-Founder James He in a public statement.
Founded in 2024 by James He and Patrick Sharpe, Artificial Societies has developed AS, a platform designed to test how virtual groups of people – each represented by AI personas – interact and respond to messaging. The platform allows users to simulate target audiences and receive feedback in minutes, offering a new method for assessing product ideas, marketing campaigns, and communications strategies without engaging traditional panels or market research surveys.
The platform launched publicly following Artificial Societies’ participation in Y Combinator’s W25 batch. Since then, the startup has seen over 15,000 users run more than 100,000 simulations. Earlier this year, it also simulated 1,000 venture capitalists and relocated its headquarters from a flat in Bayswater to an office in London’s City district.
The AS platform enables users to create two types of digital societies: one based on a defined target audience profile, and another modelled after a user’s own social media followers.
Simulations run on a credit system, with each run consuming one credit. Free accounts begin with three credits, and professional subscriptions unlock unlimited testing.
Each AI persona is built using individual-level behavioural data from multiple online sources. These personas are designed to emulate human characteristics such as preferences, motivations, and decision-making patterns. Once simulations are executed, users receive results including performance scores, qualitative feedback, and summarised insights on how their content or idea was received by the artificial group.
Users can run tests across various pre-defined contexts – such as social media posts, emails, and advertisements – with the option to request custom formats. By offering real-time simulation outputs, Artificial Societies allows teams to explore, refine, and forecast messaging impact before deploying it to real audiences.
“We enable anyone to create a simulation of their target audience and get insights in minutes, not months. Now, we’re helping businesses create accurate representations of their customers, so every message, product, and initiative always hits the mark. This journey has been incredible so far, and I’m immensely grateful to have the backing of some amazing people to bring this vision to life,” added Sharpe.
With this new funding, the company aims to improve prediction accuracy, build new features for the platform, and scale partnerships in sectors like market research, audience testing, branding, and content development.
While the synthetic persona space is seeing increased competition from players such as Synthetic Users, Evidenza, and Ask Rally, Artificial Societies’ early traction, investor backing, and enterprise positioning suggest it is well-placed to scale further across European and global markets.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/08/british-ai-startup-artificial-societies-raises-e4-5-million-to-simulate-human-behaviour-at-scale/
