Six early-stage companies developing solutions across measurement and currency, metrics and data selected for one-year, no-cost Coalition membership
New York, NY February 3, 2026 – The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) today announced the companies selected for membership under its 2026 Startup Program.
The Startup Program, introduced in 2025, is a learning, partnership-development and networking initiative designed for early-stage companies building product solutions aligned with CIMM’s core mission: advancing innovations in measurement and currency development, metrics and data collaboration across the media and advertising ecosystem. Program members receive full, complimentary access to CIMM programs, meetings and events, research, and networking opportunities.
Following a rigorous review of applicants by CIMM’s executive team and Steering Committee, the inaugural cohort includes:
- Aqxle: Led by Bharad Ramesh, Aqxle’s system of AI agents is an intelligence layer that unifies fragmented data to automate legacy research and media workflows for marketers—accelerating time to insights and decisions
- BranchLab: Founded by Josh Walsh and Michael Parkes, BranchLab is an AI platform for pharma commercialization, enabling brands to design, activate, and measure audiences – ultimately driving health outcomes through its proprietary neural networks that predict health outcomes in demographic data to enable privacy-safe, high-performing activation.
- DAIVID: Led by Ian Forrester, DAIVID is the ad industry’s most reliable and scalable source of creative data, powering strategy and performance in the age of AI. Its platform evaluates advertising effectiveness across the key drivers of attention, emotion, memory and intent.
- Simantea: Led by Pete East, Simantea provides access to high-quality, single-source purchase and media data in real-time powered by a mobile app which tracks continuous capture of purchases, web/app use, location, and TV/digital ad exposure from a nationally representative panel.
- Vuer: Led by Omar Delgado, Vuer offers real-time verification of TV co-viewing, creating a scalable, audience-based currency for both linear and connected TV advertising for publishers, agencies and DSPs to transact on.
- Wantent: Led by Lesha Shaldenko, Wantent is an AI-driven emotion and content measurement platform that monitors real-time, moment by moment audience reactions across human and AI audience panels, decoding facial and behavioral signals to uncover and predict authentic emotional engagement with media.
Program members will gain exposure and direct access to potential customers and partners. In turn, CIMM’s established members will benefit from early visibility into frontier technologies shaping the future of measurement, ad effectiveness, and video.
“CIMM is pleased to welcome this first cohort of members to the Startup Program,” said Evan Cohen, SVP, Projects and Strategic Initiatives at CIMM. “Across the applicant pool, we saw companies deeply focused on solving real industry needs with privacy-forward, data-driven solutions, which made the selection process exceptionally difficult. These companies demonstrate the depth and rigor of innovation currently underway in measurement, currency, and effectiveness, and we’re proud to foster collaboration around these solutions.”
The CIMM Startup Program runs for one year, followed by new cohorts selected for each subsequent calendar year. To learn more about this year’s Program members or how to apply for the 2027 cohort, visit: https://cimm-us.org/startup-program/.
About CIMM
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) is a non-partisan, pan-industry coalition focused on cultivating improvements, best practices and innovations in measurement and currency, new metrics and approaches to understanding the value of media, and data collaboration and enablement. CIMM’s members include leading networks, studios, streamers and programmers, MVPDs, TV OEMs and OS providers, major digital businesses, agencies, measurement and data providers, trade bodies and consultants. CIMM is a subsidiary of the Advertising Research Foundation and adheres to the ARF’s principles of scientific rigor, objectivity and evidence-based research.
