Simile: AI Models of Real Customers That Companies Question Before They Launch

Simile sells AI models of real customer groups to large companies, which type a question and get the share of a group choosing each option. A CVS Health vice president says research that usually takes six to eight weeks took about 20 minutes.
artificial-intelligence
entrepreneurship
Author

Kabui, Charles

Published

2026-11-09

Keywords

simile, ai-simulation, digital-twins, market-research, behavior-prediction

Download as PDF

Simile is a startup that sells AI models of real customer groups to large companies. It works like a survey whose respondents are computer models of real people. A team types a question, such as which flavor and price adults aged 21 to 34 would pick, and gets the share of that group choosing each option. A second model estimates how far off each answer is likely to be and shows a confidence label from Low to High. Simile trains the models on interviews, surveys and shopping records from consenting participants: the CVS Health model uses 2.9 million responses from more than 400,000 people.

A CVS Health vice president told a Wall Street Journal summit that traditional research reaching patients and healthcare providers usually takes six to eight weeks and took about 20 minutes with Simile. The executive said CVS Health checks the models against its survey panels. Chief executive Joon Sung Park told the Journal that access costs $150,000 to millions of dollars a year per customer. Simile reports that a result labeled High confidence has a 95% chance of coming close enough to real behavior to guide a decision, against 38% for Low.

Polling firm Gallup built test models from interviews with about 1,000 members of its survey panel and checks them against real panel results. It will not use simulated answers in its published population estimates. In July 2026 Simile raised over $200 million at a $2 billion valuation to work toward simulating all eight billion people.

Read More: MiroFish, a free tool that makes simulated AI characters react to a news item or draft policy

Sources:

Disclaimer: For information only. Accuracy or completeness not guaranteed. Illegal use prohibited. Not professional advice or solicitation. Read more: /terms-of-service

Reuse

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE v3.0(View License)

Citation

BibTeX citation:
@misc{kabui2026,
  author = {{Kabui, Charles}},
  title = {Simile: {AI} {Models} of {Real} {Customers} {That}
    {Companies} {Question} {Before} {They} {Launch}},
  date = {2026-11-09},
  url = {https://toknow.ai/posts/simile-ai-models-of-real-customers-test-decisions/},
  langid = {en-GB}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Kabui, Charles. 2026. “Simile: AI Models of Real Customers That Companies Question Before They Launch.” https://toknow.ai/posts/simile-ai-models-of-real-customers-test-decisions/.