The partnership will give Firefish exclusive rights to use the QualifyAI platform for the rest of 2024.

QualifyAI was founded earlier this year by senior Firefish staff Jem Fawcus (pictured left) and Richard Owen (pictured right), both of whom retained their posts at Firefish.

QualifyAI will work with AI consultancy Deeper Insights to build custom AI agents trained on two decades of qualitative research data to help speed up and automate qual.

Initial products launched by the company include Qualify:Comms, Qualify:Ideas and Qualify:Audiences.

Fawcus said: “We’re thrilled to announce Firefish as one of our founding pillar agency clients.

“Their focus on human strategy makes them the perfect partner for a platform founded on melding the strengths of what AI brings with the human essence of qualitative research.”

Dan Rose, managing director at Firefish UK, added: “Our partnership with QualifyAI is attracting new revenues streams by allowing us to offer qual research at speeds and costs that were impossible before.

“The quality of insight we’re seeing is surprising and delighting our own teams and more importantly, our clients.”