SINUS-Institut and Berlin start-up Minds launch AI…

The SINUS Milieu-Minds make target group knowledge tangible in dialogue - as synthetic personas based on the Sinus-Milieus®.

HEIDELBERG / BERLIN, July 9, 2026. SINUS-Institut and Berlin start-up Minds are announcing their collaboration. Together they are launching the SINUS Milieu-Minds: an AI-supported dialogue tool for target group understanding, market research and strategic communication. The SINUS Milieu-Minds are AI-generated personas for the Sinus-Milieus, a society and target-group typology that groups people with similar values and a comparable social situation into ten "groups of like-minded people". Users can enter into direct conversation with the AI personas. They answer from the perspective of their respective lifeworld and make milieu-typical attitudes, language styles and reactions immediately tangible in dialogue.

The basis of the Milieu-Minds is the SINUS-Institut's decades of milieu research.

"Artificial intelligence is only as good as the knowledge on which it is based. And that knowledge comes from listening to real people. The Milieu-Minds replace neither social research nor our institute's expertise. They make milieu knowledge easier to access and enable our clients to include target group perspectives early and through dialogue."
Dr. Marc Calmbach, Managing Director of SINUS-Institut.

With the SINUS Milieu-Minds, ideas, messages, campaigns, products or concepts can be reflected on early from a target group perspective. The tool makes it possible to sharpen hypotheses, better assess target group reactions and prepare qualitative or quantitative research in a more focused way.

"Understanding a target group should not end with a slide or a report. With the SINUS Milieu-Minds, teams bring the Sinus-Milieus live into their work and test how a message lands before investing time and budget. The collaboration with SINUS ensures that these personas are based on real milieu research - and do not improvise on the basis of generic AI information."
Prof. Dr. Friedrich von Borries, Co-Founder of Minds

By default, two personas are available per milieu: one female and one male SINUS Milieu-Mind. This allows users to also take gender-specific nuances within a milieu into account. Through the Minds platform, the offering is expanded with additional facets, e.g. age, life situation or migration biography. Customer-specific SINUS Milieu-Minds are also possible.

Complement to the SINUS Milieu Navigator

The SINUS Milieu-Minds complement the SINUS Milieu Navigator, the AI-supported knowledge solution of SINUS-Institut. While the Navigator makes source-based target group knowledge from SINUS information packages and SINUS proprietary research accessible, the Milieu-Minds enable direct dialogue with milieu-typical AI personas. This combines well-founded information with an experienceable change of perspective.

The SINUS Milieu-Minds can be booked through the Minds Marketplace. They are also integrated into the SINUS Milieu Navigator, where two personas per milieu are available by default.

Webinar on the AI solutions around the Sinus-Milieus®

As part of a free webinar, the SINUS Milieu Navigator and the SINUS Milieu-Minds will be presented on July 15, 2026, from 11:00 to 12:00 CEST. A further webinar on working in greater depth with the synthetic milieu personas will follow at the end of July.

About the cooperation partners: SINUS-Institut and Minds

SINUS Markt- und Sozialforschung GmbH, with offices in Heidelberg and Berlin, has been a specialist in psychological and social-science research and consulting for more than 40 years. The institute develops strategies for private companies as well as public institutions that use sociocultural change as a success factor.

A central tool for this are the Sinus-Milieus, a society and target-group model that groups people according to their lifeworlds into "groups of like-minded people". The Sinus-Milieus have been among the best-known and most influential segmentation approaches for decades and are now available for more than 50 countries.

SINUS works closely with its sister companies INTEGRAL Markt- und Meinungsforschung in Vienna and OPINION Market Research & Consulting in Nuremberg (INTEGRAL-SINUS-OPINION Group).

More information about SINUS-Institut at www.sinus-institut.de.

Minds (getminds.ai) is an AI research platform for synthetic panels, persona simulation and same-day target group insights. Teams use Minds to create AI-supported target groups, expert panels and stakeholder simulations and to test ideas, messages, products and strategic decisions before investing time and budget in implementation. Minds understands its technology as a complement to classical research: it makes assumptions visible and improves the quality of subsequent research with real people.

More information about Minds at www.getminds.ai.

Media Contact

Alexander Doudkin
Co-Founder & CEO, Minds
[email protected]

Jan Hecht
Director Research & Consulting, SINUS-Institut
[email protected]

Press Materials

Screenshots of the SINUS Milieu-Minds are available for download at Link.

A short video on the SINUS Milieu Navigator and the SINUS Milieu-Minds is available at Link.