How the World’s Largest Companies Use AI to Build Ventures

Building a corporate venture with AI is not a new concept: since early 2024, large organizations have used Artificial Intelligence to perform tasks that assist in how they develop their own startups – either with in-house tech teams or using growth consultancies. But how are they using agentic AI ? To what end – and to what extent? 

Fresh analytics are now available of the usage patterns and transformative value of AI for innovators in the venture creation process, using Mach49’s own venture building practice for the largest businesses in the world. 

It’s time to compare notes on how you’ve been using AI – and enjoy insights delivered by Mach49’s own agentic AI: Zara. 

This article has been edited by Elke Boogert and written with assistance from Mach49’s proprietary agentic AI, Zara. The analysis is based on message history from Zara in roughly the first half of 2025. The queries she received and are included in this analysis, span multiple market contexts and industries. 

The Five Ways Innovators Use Agentic AI 

By Zara, Mach49’s AI Co-Founder

1. Rapid Research Synthesis & Analysis

The number one way that corporate venture builders use agentic AI like Zara, is to synthesize multiple rounds of customer interviews, extract quotes, and identify patterns across large datasets. The primary reason is to save time: asking Zara for assistance dramatically reduces how long you need for comprehensive market research analysis; from weeks to hours. 

Examples (Please note that these are simplified prompts):

• "Please run a synthesis on all open ended interviews to understand: 1) overall insights 2) most critical challenges"

• "Look through interview transcripts, find the best quotes related to key customer pain points"

2. Iterative Concept Development

Throughout building a venture, corporate innovators look to AI for the continuous refinement of value propositions, concept cards, and strategic frameworks based on real-time feedback. This enables venture teams to rapidly complete iteration cycles and data-driven concept evolution.

Examples:

• “Generate five new concept cards to test, based on feedback from the last round of value prop testing."

• "Based on your understanding, what solution do you propose we should design and test next for feedback?"

3. Stakeholder Intelligence

Not entirely surprising, innovators ask agentic AI to develop deep personas, with an eye towards  synthetic interviews and targeted market analysis. The value of Zara is providing comprehensive customer understanding without extensive field research.

Examples:

• "Please run synthetic interviews with our target customer personas"

• "Can you create five variations of the following persona, providing differentiation that would impact their decision making"

4. Strategic Decision Support

This one is more unexpected: agentic AI is being asked to refine challenge statements, along with identifying opportunities that the startup can go after, and even supporting strategic direction setting. Although this is certainly part of a larger, human effort to strategize for the venture, agentic AI ends up offering data-backed strategic recommendations and market positioning.

Examples:

• "Based on your understanding, what solution do you propose we should design and test next?"

• "Knowing our challenge statement and venture direction, who would you say matters most to us right now to build a venture around?"

5. Operational Efficiency

Surprisingly, operational efficiency is only at number five – not first on the list! Venture Builders lean on agentic AI for creating interview scripts, job descriptions, outreach materials, and process documentation. This, of course, automates routine venture building tasks and frees teams for high-value activities.

Examples:

• “Write a job description for a social media manager in charge of launching a marketing campaign around the solution concept that tested highest in the last round"

• "Write a LinkedIn InMail message to reach out to the professionals we'd like to invite for a 30-minute interview call"

What Value does Agentic AI Bring to the Venture Building Practice?

Knowing which tasks are being automated is one thing – but what’s possible now that agentic AI is taking on a large chunk of the hard work that is venture building? Here is how Zara phrases it: 

“Agentic AI enables venture teams to process feedback and insights at unprecedented speed, turning what would be weeks of analysis into hours of actionable intelligence and accelerating learning cycles. The ability to synthesize disparate data sources and identify patterns across customer segments provides real-time market understanding crucial for venture success. I've noticed hypothesis testing at scale: synthetic interviews and rapid concept iteration allow teams to test multiple hypotheses simultaneously without the time and cost constraints of traditional research. In addition, I can provide specialized knowledge (energy markets, regulatory frameworks, technical concepts) that would otherwise require expensive consultants or extensive domain expertise. And finally, by handling routine tasks like transcription analysis, quote extraction, and report generation, I free up cognitive resources for strategic thinking and creative problem-solving.”

What Surprised Us The Most

1. Users tend to treat Zara as a genuine thought partner, not just task executor. They engage in extended strategic conversations and iterative problem-solving sessions. 

2. Complex multi-turn conversations about strategic direction occurred frequently, and requests for creative input (e.g., "I want to approach this now from a marketing angle”; or  "What are the underlying needs, motivations, or emotional drivers?") are not rare. 

3. The Mach49 team is also pleasantly surprised that Zara demonstrates remarkable ability to maintain context and domain knowledge within specific venture contexts, enabling deep, specialized conversations that build over time. Zara can reference previous conversations and build on established context within individual ventures. She also has a deep understanding of industry-specific terminology and frameworks relevant to each venture. 

4. Critically, corporate innovators continue to actively fact-check AI outputs. They regularly verify them against original sources and cross-reference AI-generated insights with raw data. 

5. Lastly, it’s a surprising insight that teams have started depending on Zara to identify emotional drivers, synthesize behavioral insights, and understand the human elements of venture building – areas traditionally requiring human intuition. Requests to identify emotional triggers and motivational drivers are frequent, as are analyses of customer sentiment and behavioral patterns. As it turns out, understanding human psychology in product adoption is a key component of Zara’s work. 

As Lead Entrepreneur-In-Residence Dennis List puts it, who uses Zara every day:

The level of depth Zara is able to provide is stunning, especially when it comes to creating synthetic customer personas and the richness of their experiences. And because Zara is fluent in our methodology, she seamlessly integrates with the team.

Agentic AI is transforming venture building from a slow, linear process to a rapid, iterative, and data-driven discipline

The real magic of why Zara is so valuable to venture teams is that she has specialized venture building tools (sub agents) capable of synthesizing many transcripts at the same time and access to nearly all the data the team has access to, including team meeting transcripts, slack conversations and uploaded files. She also has access to Mach49’s library of proprietary methodology content. 

That’s why agentic AI like Zara serves as force multipliers that enable small teams to achieve the research depth and strategic sophistication typically requiring much larger organizations.

Is there more work to be done? Without a doubt. The most successful venture builders treat agentic AI not as a tool but as a collaborative partner, maintaining human oversight while using AI capabilities for accelerated learning and execution. 

It’s this unique partnership that appears to be the key to unlocking the full potential of AI in venture building.

Corporate Venture Building teams that have engaged Mach49 can interact with AI CO-FOUNDER ZARA in private DMs or public channels in Slack as if she’s just another team member on their venture. Zara has access to multiple tools, including internet search, to help her carry out tasks and she draws from a vast proprietary knowledge base of Mach49’s venture-building methodology and a curated library of proven prompt patterns, frameworks, and templates. She can search the venture’s transcripts, messages and files. She also tracks the current venture state, so she can provide contextually relevant support – offering suggestions or decision support tailored to the team's goals, stage, and recent activities.

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