Speed has always been a competitive advantage in B2B markets. However, with AI accelerating how quickly competitors can launch, pivot, and reposition, that advantage is shrinking faster than ever. The traditional competitive intelligence model that many rely on is simply too slow and fragmented to keep pace.
Marketers, Product Marketing Managers (PMMs), and founders aren’t short on data. The problem? They lack clarity, are unsure of the current market situation, and are uncertain about the next steps. Yes, the signals are there, but it’s buried under Slack threads, call transcripts, LinkedIn updates, pricing page tweaks, and endless industry news. Manual research can’t keep pace. By the time an insight is surfaced, the market has already moved on, like discovering a competitor’s flash discount campaign days after it ended, only to realize they’ve already converted key accounts. AI-driven CI can capture and flag those pricing shifts in real time, enabling teams to respond within hours instead of losing the window entirely.
This urgency is impossible to ignore: The global CI market is projected to hit $111.4 billion by 2032. It’s not just growth. It’s a sign that the companies that can make sense of noise first will take the lead.
Why General-Purpose AI Falls Short for Competitive Intelligence
Tools that many teams rely on, like ChatGPT or Perplexity, can summarize vast information instantly, but they weren’t designed for grounded, contextual strategic insight. Without careful data handling, hallucinations risk contaminating decision-making. To make matters worse, newer reasoning‑focused AI models are hallucinating more frequently: one of OpenAI’s systems (o4‑mini) hallucinates nearly half the time, at 48%.
As the Product Marketing Alliance article on training CI teams explains, building a competitive intelligence program requires establishing credibility, structuring processes clearly, and earning trust through early wins.
Now, the problem isn’t that AI can’t process competitive data. It’s these models:
- Don’t have structured access to proprietary internal signals.
- They aren’t built to connect dots over time.
- Can’t control memory for privacy and compliance.
If your CI system doesn’t integrate private company signals, sales calls, support tickets, and internal channels, it’s working with half the picture. And in high-velocity markets, half the picture is dangerous.
How PMMs Are Redefining Competitive Intelligence for the AI Era
With general-purpose AI unable to integrate proprietary signals, track changes over time, or manage memory responsibly, PMMs are stepping in to close the gap. They are reengineering CI processes to surface the most relevant insights, connect them across contexts, and keep teams informed in real time.
The diagram illustrates how PMs and PMMs collaborate from planning to measurement, highlighting the touchpoints where competitive intelligence can be embedded for maximum impact. Source: Substack
As Yi Lin Pei, a seasoned product marketing coach and advisor, says:
“Closing the competitive intelligence gap isn’t about collecting more data; it’s about building systems that connect insights and trigger action. In the AI era, PMMs have to move from passive data collectors to architects of intelligence flows, where human judgment and AI-powered detection work together to catch signals early and act before opportunities disappear.”
What Is the Cost of Manual Competitive Intelligence
The cost of manual CI isn’t just the time spent on manual research. It’s lost opportunities. In my experience managing large-scale product portfolios in competitive online marketplaces, a slow reaction to competitor promotions can cost millions in missed revenue.
Research confirms this risk. Competitive pricing is the top factor influencing retailer choice online, cited by 70% of respondents in a study. That means if your CI system misses a pricing change, you are at risk of losing the majority of potential customers to a competitor.
Competitive pricing is the most influential factor in retailer choice, ahead of free shipping and product selection. Source: DataWeave
With AI enabling same-day market responses, a week-late update to your battlecard is like showing up to the battlefield after it’s over. The opportunity isn’t just gone. It’s your competitor who has already repositioned based on your inaction.
Building the Next-Gen CI Stack
Image: Man Runs up the Mountain With Flag on the Top | wan wei | Shutterstock
If we were building a competitive intelligence stack from scratch today, it would not look anything like the traditional model of collecting static reports and updating battlecards once a quarter. It would be AI-native, privacy-aware, and designed for the speed and complexity of modern B2B workflows.
1. Listen Everywhere
Competitor strategy shifts often appear first in small, early signals that never make it into a press release. Capturing these signals alongside official updates maximizes the benefits of competitive intelligence by giving you the context to act before rivals gain an advantage.
Your monitoring should include:
- Slack channels like #competitive, #product-feedback, or #sales-wins
- Call transcripts from Gong or Zoom where competitors are mentioned
- Product updates, pricing changes, and career pages
- Tech media, subreddits, job boards, and X (formerly Twitter)
Much of what matters is found in whispers, side conversations, and changelogs. If you miss these, you are only reacting after the rest of the market has already moved.
2. Process as a Stream, Not a Snapshot
Markets move too quickly for one-time reports to stay relevant. Tracking changes over time reveals patterns that single snapshots will miss.
AI should track:
- Hiring spikes in specific roles
- Repeated loss reasons in sales calls
- Pricing changes within a quarter
Always remember that it’s correlation, not collection, that creates insight.
3. Reflect Before Remembering
One of the hardest challenges in applying LLMs to internal data is deciding what to remember and what to forget. Storing everything creates noise, slows retrieval, and risks compliance breaches, while a focused memory keeps insights relevant and reliable.
A privacy-conscious CI system should:
- Treat some inputs as disposable, inferring value, and then forgetting the raw data
- Retain others as structured summaries tied to context
- Respect rules about what can be stored, reused, or anonymized
This middle layer between source and model, which I call the memory privacy architecture, ensures intelligence stays useful without becoming a liability.
4. Prompt Curiosity, Not Just Reporting
Competitive intelligence is not just about collecting facts. It is about surfacing the right questions at the right time so teams can act before opportunities or threats pass.
A well-designed CI system might nudge you in Slack with prompts like:
- “Three deals mentioned Competitor A this week. Want to review positioning?”
- “Competitor B just launched a pricing calculator. Could that impact your sales conversations?”
- “Your reps are using three different framings for the same competitor. Should we align?”
When CI challenges you to interpret what the data means, it moves from being a static report to an active driver of strategy.
AI × CI: The Emerging Market Landscape
Vendors like Klue and Crayon are embedding LLMs directly into CI workflows, offering contextual alerts, AI-drafted competitive updates, and integrations that feed intelligence into CRM and enablement tools.
While nearly every company is now investing in AI, only 1% consider themselves fully mature in its use. The real obstacle to scaling is not the workforce, which is primarily prepared, but the pace and decisiveness of leadership. Companies whose leaders move quickly and confidently will turn competitive intelligence into a strategic advantage that anticipates market shifts rather than merely reacting to them.
In the post-AI era, advantage will come from CI systems that move beyond monitoring to simulating market scenarios and recommending preemptive action, turning intelligence into a continuous, proactive strategy cycle.
Final Thought: The Urgency to Evolve Competitive Intelligence
Image: AI-Powered Tools Concept | Andrii Yalanskyi | Shutterstock
The future of competitive intelligence is not just another dashboard or content feed. It is something ambient, seamlessly embedded into daily workflows, always listening, and constantly asking the right questions. It is deeply contextual, driven by trust, and built to capture and act on the signals that matter most.
We are not at the finish line yet, but the gap is closing fast. Those who commit to building this future now will be the ones shaping the market, while everyone else will be forced to play catch-up.
About the Author
Takahiro Morinaga is the co-founder and CEO of Trissino Inc., creating AI-powered marketing assistants that turn competitive signals into action. He has led large-scale growth initiatives for well-known international brands and founded startups in Japan and the United States.
References
- Competitive Intelligence Alliance (n.d.). Competitive Intelligence Blogs. https://www.competitiveintelligencealliance.io/tag/competitive-intelligence/
- Crayon. (n.d.) Crayon Official Website. https://www.crayon.co/
- Data Weave (n.d.)What Is Competitive Pricing Intelligence: The Ultimate Guide. https://dataweave.com/us/ultimate-guide-to-competitive-pricing-intelligence-in-retail-and-ecommerce
- Globe News Wire. (2024)Competitive Intelligence Market To Reach USD 111.4 Billion By 2032. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/04/25/2869411/0/en/Competitive-Intelligence-Market-To-Reach-USD-111-4-Billion-By-2032-DataHorizzon-Research.html
- Klue. (n.d.) Klue Official Website. https://klue.com/
- Kompyte. (2023)5 Benefits of Competitive Intelligence: How to Maximize Your Results. https://www.kompyte.com/blog/5-benefits-of-competitive-intelligence-how-to-maximize-your-results
- LinkedIn. (n.d.) Yi Lin Pei. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yilinpei/
- McKinsey. (2025) Superagency in the Workplace: Empowering People to Unlock AI’s Full Potential.https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/superagency-in-the-workplace-empowering-people-to-unlock-ais-full-potential-at-work
- Product Marketing Alliance. (2023)Training Your Teams to Be Competitive Intelligence Rockstars. https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/training-your-teams-to-be-competitive-intelligence-rockstars/
- Substack. (2025)The Game-Changing Partner Every PM Should Know About. https://aatir.substack.com/p/the-game-changing-partner-every-pm
- Techopedia. (2025). 48% Error Rate: AI Hallucinations Rise in 2025 Reasoning Systems. https://www.techopedia.com/ai-hallucinations-rise
