What AI software buyers are actually asking for.

The AI tool market moves faster than quarterly reports.

Analyst reports show last quarter's winners. Funding databases show who raised. Ad-tracking shows who spent on marketing. None of that tells you which tools real teams are asking for, or what they want to replace.

Four views of buyer demand.

• Category demand — which categories buyers are asking about. How many Smart Match sessions land in each category, and how that moves over time.
• Stack overlap — what buyers already use together. The tools buyers name as their current stack, and which ones appear side by side — real combinations rather than vendor integration lists.
• Switching intent — who is looking to replace what. Buyers who name a tool they already use and a timeline for deciding, grouped by category and by the tool they have today.
• Budget bands — what buyers say they will spend. The monthly budget band buyers declare, by category and team size.

Three kinds of reader.

• Vendors — know your category. See what buyers in your category ask for, what they use today, and what they are looking to replace.
• Investors — early demand signals. Buyer demand shows up in what people ask for before it shows up in revenue.
• Enterprise buyers — stack planning. See what teams of your size actually run and what they budget, not what vendors claim.

Where the numbers come from.

Two sources HokAI already runs. Every listed tool is re-checked against the vendor's own pages on a rolling schedule, and each record shows the date it was last checked. Each Smart Match session records the buyer's need, current tools, budget band and decision timeline in structured form. Sessions are anonymised and reported only at category level, never as individual buyers.

Can I buy this today?

Not as a self-serve product yet. We are building the reports from data HokAI already collects. If you tell us the category and the question you care about, we will tell you honestly whether the data can answer it now and what a report would look like.

How is this different from Crunchbase or PitchBook?

Those cover the financial layer: funding rounds, valuations and deals. This covers the demand layer: what buyers ask for, what they already run and what they are looking to replace. The two answer different questions.

The categories are the same ones buyers use in Smart Match and the AI directory. To tell us what you need, contact the team. Looking for individual buyers who have agreed to be contacted? See Declared-Intent Leads.