Capital is consolidating, senior appointments are moving towards commercial roles, and the reasons leaders give for leaving have very little to do with pay. A quarterly report from Talent Pools.
Written for founders, chief executives, boards, private equity investors and talent leaders hiring across insights, research, consultancy and research technology.
Two of the 44 senior leaders who gave a reason for being open to a move named pay. Progression, restructuring and disagreement with strategy accounted for 26 of the 44.
Eight of 44 were open to leaving because they disagreed with the direction of the business, a question standard engagement instruments tend not to ask.
Of the 23 who named a gap, eight named commercial and P&L ownership. Two named artificial intelligence tooling.
97 acquisitions were logged against 54 funding rounds. Acquisition activity is running well ahead of funding activity, which changes the shape and the urgency of leadership demand.
Three actions follow directly from the evidence, and each can be taken inside a quarter.
The evidence behind each of these sits in the sections that follow, with the base size stated on every exhibit.
Traditional research budgets have been under pressure throughout the period. The capital has relocated rather than disappeared, and the pattern of that relocation determines which leadership roles are being created and how quickly they need filling.
Almost every significant raise in the period went to a business rebuilding insight around artificial intelligence. AlphaSense raised $350 million at a $7.5 billion valuation with backing from Accenture Ventures, Vitruvian and J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Listen Labs moved from a $27 million Series A to a $69 million Series B within a year. Fundamental emerged from stealth with $255 million to build a large tabular model, TwelveLabs raised $100 million for AI video analysis, and Hightouch raised $150 million at $2.75 billion.
European activity follows the same logic. Signal AI in London took $165 million from Battery Ventures and is now profitable while expanding into the United States. Nscale raised a $2 billion Series C at a $14.6 billion valuation. Electric Twin raised $14 million led by Atomico, Bolt Insight raised £7 million, Kpler in Brussels secured over $1 billion from Sixth Street, and Lovable in Sweden reached a $1.8 billion valuation.
Qualtrics completed its $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. Publicis agreed to acquire LiveRamp for $2.2 billion. Omnicom completed its merger with IPG to form the largest advertising holding company, with revenue above $25 billion. NIQ raised more than $1.05 billion in its NYSE listing, Thoma Bravo took Verint private for $2 billion, and H.I.G. established Kantar Media as an independent business.
Below that tier, roll-ups are reshaping the middle market. SHARCC in the United Kingdom assembled a group by acquiring majority stakes in around ten data and insight firms. Norstat made four acquisitions: DemoSCOPE in Switzerland, Sample Solutions in the Netherlands, National Sample in Czechia, and Offerwise, which took the group beyond Europe into the Americas. Discuss and Voxco merged into a single AI-led insights company, while Stagwell, Accenture and Circana continued to buy capability and geography.
Ipsos committed more than €1 billion over five years under its Horizons strategy, primarily through acquisitions and strategic investments in technology, AI and data. WPP restructured into four operating units, WPP Media, Creative, Production and Enterprise Solutions, targeting £500 million of gross annualised cost savings by 2028. NIQ unveiled six new AI-powered capabilities at its C360 event in June. Kantar entered a strategic partnership with Quilt.AI, including a non-equity financial commitment to co-develop joint offers. Databricks closed a $5 billion round in August at a $190 billion valuation, with an annualised revenue run-rate above $7 billion.
The counterweight appears in the spending data. The Q2 2026 IPA Bellwether, a quarterly survey of around 300 UK companies, recorded market research budgets falling for a sixth consecutive quarter, although the net balance improved to minus 4.1 per cent from minus 8.5 per cent in the first quarter. Forrester's second-quarter revenue fell around 10 per cent year on year to $100.2 million and contract value declined 3 per cent, while the company maintained its full-year guidance of $350 million to $360 million. Gartner held up better: reported revenue edged down 0.6 per cent following a divestment, adjusted revenue grew 2.8 per cent, and it raised parts of its full-year outlook.
Taken together, the direction is worth watching. Traditional research budgets remain under pressure at the same time as the largest players commit heavily to AI, proprietary data and tools that work closer to day-to-day decisions. These figures show two trends running alongside each other rather than proving that one stream of spend has moved into the other.
Figures in this section are drawn from company announcements, published quarterly results and trade press reports between September 2025 and August 2026, and were verified against primary sources in August 2026.
Commercial, revenue and growth roles were the second largest category of senior appointment. Transformation, AI and data roles accounted for 16 of the 271. For all the noise about technology, the leadership roles this market is creating are commercial ones.
The findings below are drawn from 54 conversations with directors, heads of function, managing directors, partners and C-suite leaders, held between January 2025 and August 2026. Participants who did not discuss a topic are excluded from that question rather than counted as a negative, so the base varies by exhibit and is stated in each case.
| Primary reason | Count |
|---|---|
| No progression or ceiling | 9 |
| Restructure or redundancy | 9 |
| Disagreement with business direction | 8 |
| Other | 7 |
| Flexibility or location | 4 |
| Work no longer interesting | 3 |
| Pay | 2 |
| Weak leadership above them | 2 |
| Not discussed | 10 |
Three drivers dominate: a visible ceiling on progression, a restructure or redundancy, and disagreement with the direction of the business. Pay was named twice.
The third driver deserves separate attention. These are people senior enough to understand the strategy and to have raised their concerns internally. When they leave, the organisation loses the individual and retains the disagreement. Engagement instruments generally ask whether people feel supported and informed. In our experience they rarely ask whether the leadership team believes the plan will work.2
The prevailing assumption is that the development need at the top of insight functions is technical. This sample points elsewhere. Senior research and insight leaders were considerably more concerned about running a business than about running a model, and commercial and P&L ownership was the single most frequently named gap. Read alongside Exhibit 2, the capability the market is hiring hardest for is the one the senior talent pool feels least equipped to supply.
Twenty-one of the 54 raised artificial intelligence in relation to their own role or sector without being asked. Among those 21, nine described it as threat and opportunity together, six as an opportunity, three as a threat and three in neutral terms.
The larger number is the 33 who did not raise it at all. In a sector whose trade press has discussed little else for two years, three in five senior leaders talking about their own careers did not introduce the subject. At this level, anxiety is presenting as concern about progression, restructuring and strategy rather than as fear of replacement.
The findings point in a consistent direction. The senior people in this sample were drawn towards work they considered worth doing and away from organisations where the ceiling was visible or the strategy was contested. Reward appears to act as a hygiene factor at this level rather than as a lever.
Joanna Byerley, Founder
Three actions that follow directly from the evidence, and that can be taken inside a quarter.
Add a direct question to your leadership review or engagement instrument asking whether the leadership team believes the current plan will work. Disagreement with direction was the third most common reason senior leaders gave for being open to a move, and it is not a question standard engagement instruments tend to ask.2
Commercial and P&L ownership was the most frequently named gap among the 23 senior leaders in this sample who named one, and commercial roles were the second largest category of senior appointment across the market. On a base this small the finding is a prompt rather than a proof, but it is worth checking whether a development budget weighted towards technical training is addressing a different problem.
Interesting work was the most frequently stated priority for the next role, ahead of scope, reward and flexibility. Briefs that lead on package and title are competing on the dimension this group ranks lowest.
This report is intended to be checkable. The basis of every figure is set out below, including where the evidence is thin.
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