We Built at the Edge of What Was Possible
Dan Gordon, CTO, sits down with Matt Connolly, CEO and Founder of Sønr – on building Sønr 2.0, why AI alone isn’t enough, and what it means to put an always-on intelligence engine in the hands of an entire industry.
For the past decade, market intelligence in insurance has worked the same way. Someone identifies a need, commissions some research, waits weeks for a report, shares it with a handful of people – and by the time it lands, the market has already moved.
Sønr was built to change that. And with 2.0, the change is no longer incremental.
From data to intelligence
When Sønr launched, the question most insurers were asking was simple: who’s out there, and who’s funding them? That was enough. The market was still mapping itself.
That question has grown considerably more complex. Today’s innovation and strategy teams want to understand why a technology is gaining traction, how it integrates with existing infrastructure, who the emerging players are before they become obvious – and increasingly, how all of that connects to decisions being made inside their own organisation.
Not just another AI product
Here’s the question we get asked. Can’t someone just do this in ChatGPT?
The answer is: not really… and the reason matters.
General AI models are powerful. But they don’t have Sønr’s data. They don’t have ten years of proprietary intelligence, direct relationships with startups and accelerators, or the historical depth that comes from tracking a market through multiple cycles. And critically, they don’t iterate.
They take your question and give you an answer. Sønr 2.0 takes your question, interrogates it, builds a brief, researches it across multiple sources, quality-checks its own output, and delivers something closer to what an experienced analyst team would produce – in minutes rather than weeks.
A team, not a tool
The way Dan describes what’s been built is telling. He doesn’t call it a platform, or even an AI assistant. He calls it a team.
“It’s effectively like multiple members of the team along the way – one researching, another QA’ing the data, another writing the report, another reviewing it. At all times trying to get the best output and build the quality up.”
That framing matters. Because what most organisations need isn’t more data – they need someone to do something useful with it. Sønr 2.0 operates like a research function that never clocks off, doesn’t need briefing from scratch every time, and gets smarter the more it’s used.
The human layer
AI-generated intelligence is only as good as the confidence you have in it. That’s why Sønr 2.0 isn’t purely agentic – there’s a human layer built in.
Every output carries a confidence score. If you need to go deeper, or need a human eye on something before it informs a major decision, Sønr’s research team is available to review, validate, and extend. It’s the same analysts who’ve been working with the industry’s leading insurers for years – now accessible directly through the platform.
Always on. Always learning.
Perhaps the biggest shift with 2.0 isn’t any single feature – it’s the move from reactive to proactive intelligence.
Previously, market intelligence was event-driven. You needed a report, you commissioned one. You needed to know about a competitor, someone went and found out.
With 2.0, agentic workflows run continuously in the background.
Quarterly market reports are generated automatically. Startup watchlists update daily. Intelligence compounds over time – every report, every query, every document added to the platform makes it more useful, not just for the person who added it, but for their whole organisation.
For everyone in the ecosystem
Sønr has spent close to a decade working with the world’s leading insurers. 2.0 doesn’t change that – but it does open the platform to a much wider set of players.
For a startup founder, it means understanding exactly where your product sits in the competitive landscape – and staying ahead of what your future enterprise clients are thinking about.
For a VC or CVC, it means turning investment theses into structured intelligence workflows, from market mapping through to live deal monitoring.
For an innovation lead at a carrier, it means having the depth of a dedicated research team, even as innovation responsibilities spread across more parts of the organisation.
What surprised even the people building it
Building Sønr 2.0 meant working at the very front edge of what AI technology could actually do — and staying there as it moved.
“If you rewind 12 months, the thought of having an AI agent was absolute cutting edge. The thought of having an AI agent team was almost unheard of. And here we are now where this is becoming more widespread.”
The lesson Dan and the team took from that build isn’t to slow down — it’s to stay modular. To be able to swap out the components of the system as better options emerge, without breaking what’s underneath.
That’s how Sønr stays at the edge. And it’s how 2.0 will keep getting better.
The result
Sønr 2.0 is the most significant thing we’ve built. Not because of the technology – though the technology is genuinely new – but because of what it makes possible.
Deeper decisions, made faster. Intelligence that compounds rather than expires. A research capability that fits the pace of the market, not the pace of a project cycle.
Ten years in the making. Available now.
Join the Sønr 2.0 waitlist → sonr.global/2-0
