2026 is the year we complete Arbolus’ evolution into a data business — where products scale our impact and services bring our insight to life.
By the end of the year, we want the market to instinctively associate Arbolus with best-in-class customer insight in B2B technology.
If you want to understand customers, you come to Arbolus.
This transition is transformational. It makes our work compound, strengthens our competitive edge, and builds a business that is not only growing but becoming more valuable with every review we capture.
As generative AI accelerates the pace of decision-making, access to trustworthy, real-world customer insight is becoming a decisive advantage. Our ambition is to lead that future — helping the world’s top consulting firms and Tier-1 private equity investors make smarter decisions, on demand.
We’re deliberately flipping how Arbolus works — data now sits at the core of the business, with products making it scalable and services bringing it to life.
Putting data at the centre changes everything — for our clients, our experts, and for Arbolus.
For our clients, it means:
For our expert community, it means:
This is how Arbolus becomes a true data-first platform — creating better outcomes for clients, a better experience for experts, and a stronger, more valuable business for everyone.
2025 was a defining year for Arbolus — not just because we grew, but because we did much of the hard work required to complete our evolution into a data business.
It was a year of building, tightening, and learning. The progress we made in 2025 is what makes the ambition for 2026 credible.
In 2025, our Customer Review Library moved from an idea into a fully functioning, automated platform. We didn’t just improve what we delivered to clients — we fundamentally changed how insight is generated across the business.
We built a strong end-to-end experience for clients and, just as importantly, a significantly improved experience for experts. Much of this happens behind the scenes, but the impact is real: today, the majority of reviews are captured automatically through the day-to-day operation of the business, rather than through manual, one-off effort.
This is a major step change for Arbolus. It lowers friction, improves data quality, and creates a platform that compounds — allowing us to scale insight, products like Customer Reports, and client value far more efficiently into the future.
We delivered record new-business performance and an all-time high in new logos won. Five of our six zones grew in 2025, across both consulting and fund clients.
This matters. It shows that Arbolus can grow across regions and client types — not just in isolated pockets. The opportunity now is to make that growth truly universal by performing strongly in all six zones.
2025 laid the groundwork for our global delivery model, and at the beginning of 2026, our fifth office will be fully established.
With delivery centres in Barcelona, Gurugram, and San José supporting their local regions, we now have a structure that balances proximity to clients with consistency, scalability, and resilience. This was particularly important for US Consulting and positioning the business for sustainable scale.
Alongside product and commercial progress, 2025 was also about tightening the fundamentals.
We strengthened processes, improved operational discipline, and built a more sustainable operating model — giving us a solid foundation from which to grow. This work isn’t always visible, but it is essential.
By the end of 2025, Arbolus looked very different:
We’re confident that the work done in 2025 has left us in a better place. The organisation is tighter, clearer, and better positioned — and we’re committed to building a business where everyone can be proud of both their local contribution and the company we’re building together.
2025 gave us momentum. 2026 is about leverage — and making sure the market knows what we’ve built.
2026 is about leading the way in insight-driven consulting. After a year of transition in 2025, our focus is on helping clients leverage data earlier in their deals, win more pitches, and use insight more efficiently in due diligence.
We now have the foundations in place — a clearer delivery model, a growing Costa Rica hub, and better processes. This year is about making that model work at scale.
By the end of 2025, we had already built over 70,000 customer reviews. In 2026, we’re setting an ambitious goal: reaching 1 million reviews across 20,000 companies.
This isn’t about volume for its own sake. It’s about building a dataset that compounds — where every new review makes the platform more valuable, more relevant, and harder to replicate.
We believe Arbolus’ data is valuable to far more people than are currently using it. In 2026, our goal is simple: 10× more people actively using Arbolus data than in the final quarter of 2025.
This is about shifting from insight creation to insight consumption. Data only creates value when it’s seen, used, shared, and acted on.
Our expert community is one of Arbolus’ most important assets. In 2026, we want to treat it as such — not as a call-by-call resource, but as a long-term, continuously engaged community that powers our data engine.
That means creating a better, more respectful experience for experts, with clearer incentives, lower friction, and real value in return for their contribution.
In 2026, we want to fundamentally change how Arbolus goes to market. For the first time, we are close to having a data product that delivers real value to users without requiring direct human intervention from our teams.
We can now gather information automatically, generate Customer Reports automatically, deliver reviews directly through the platform, and even enable clients to book their own calls end‑to‑end. This is a material shift in how Arbolus works — and it opens up a very different future.
We are closer than ever to a world where many users engage with Arbolus primarily through the platform, with our teams providing high‑quality customer support rather than a fully bespoke delivery overlay. We expect to be meaningfully at this point by mid‑year.
That future requires a different go‑to‑market approach. When data and product do more of the work, we can sell to a much broader audience — and then be deliberate about which clients receive the full‑service offering that sits on top.
None of this works without the people behind it. To our team, our clients, and our global community of experts: thank you for the trust, collaboration, and commitment you’ve brought throughout 2025. Together, we’re building something meaningful, defensible, and increasingly differentiated.
2026 is about focus, leverage, and belief — but belief backed by execution. It’s about doubling down on what makes Arbolus distinct, scaling what works, and delivering with discipline.
With gratitude,
Sam Glasswell & Will Leeming
Co‑Founders, Arbolus