Eric Johnson remains chief executive and Johann Wrede remains chief marketing officer. Contracts and day-to-day operations stay in place. UserTesting and User Interviews remain the product names. Auros is the parent and the name they will use when they sell AI data, evaluation, and research services. The change went live at the AI Conference in San Francisco. The site is aurosglobal.com (Business Wire, 2026).
UserTesting as a company name was tight. It pointed at usability. That was accurate for a long time, and it boxed them when buyers started asking for people who can judge an assistant, a copilot draft, or a support reply written by a model.
Decades ago I sat on the other side of that panel. I tested a phone through UserTesting for a telecom company. I talked through what I saw on the handset, and the product team could watch the recording the same day. That speed is what I remembered. Plenty of research plans I see now still wait weeks for a booked session. The company lasted because that faster loop was useful. They are taking the same habit into software that writes.
What they actually own is the recruiting and verification stack
The announcement cites more than 7.6 million verified people in 34 core markets, plus more than 40 partner networks. Thoma Bravo bought UserTesting in 2023 and now lists Auros as the portfolio company. It claims more than 2,500 customers and a Bellevue headquarters. UserTesting bought User Interviews on January 7, 2026. In August it added Advanced Targeting so a UserTesting study could pull User Interviews audiences, including B2B and hard-to-reach specialists, without opening a second tool (Thoma Bravo; UserTesting, 2026).
Johnson said anyone can source a thousand generalists by Friday, and that the harder request is twelve doctors who will read a medical answer and explain why it is wrong. That is the study type they want the new name to carry: clinicians, lawyers, compliance people, financial advisors. General consumer tests stay on UserTesting. Recruitment-heavy interviews stay on User Interviews.
They also say they will not build the models they are asked to grade. Each engagement is commissioned and consented on its own terms. The customer decides what happens to the data. Write that into the statement of work, then ask who sits on the session and how that person was verified for the specialty you named.
MCP servers arrived a day earlier
On September 28 UserTesting put Model Context Protocol servers for both products into early access. From ChatGPT, Claude, Figma Make, or Gemini, a team can recruit participants, open a study, and pull transcripts without leaving the assistant where the draft started. Jennifer Artabane, vice president of product management, said the aim is to check what a customer will accept while the idea is still in that window (UserTesting, 2026).
If you already generate screens or copy inside those tools, this is the first place the new parent shows up in daily work. You stay in Claude or ChatGPT, call the panel, and bring a recording back into the same thread.
Salesforce signed Listen Labs the same day Auros launched, so interview agents can attach to the deal record (Bellamkonda, 2026). One purchase is a CRM join. The other is an independent panel you can point at a product or a model. You can budget for both if the jobs are different.
Ask for a specialist study on a live assistant
If UserTesting is already on your roster, get written confirmation that workspaces and contracts stay put. Then ask for one new study this quarter on an assistant or agent that customers already touch. Name the specialty you need. Ask how verification works for that specialty, how fast the panel fills, and whether the video lands in the same project as your current think-out-loud tests.
If you have no contract, start with that same study anyway. Pick one live answer path and put five people on it this month.
Pull the last ten UserTesting or User Interviews studies. Count how many tested a screen and how many tested a reply written by a model. If the second count is zero, pick one live assistant and run five verified people against it this month.
Ask Auros which specialist panels they can fill in your industry inside two weeks, and whether those sessions file into the workspace your designers already open.
Works cited
UserTesting. "UserTesting Announces Rebranding as Auros, Providing the Human Network Behind AI." Business Wire, 29 Sept. 2026, www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929631519/en/UserTesting-Announces-Rebranding-as-Auros-Providing-the-Human-Network-Behind-AI.
Thoma Bravo. "Auros." Thoma Bravo portfolio, 29 Sept. 2026, www.thomabravo.com/portfolio/auros.
UserTesting. "UserTesting Acquires User Interviews to Strengthen the Industry's Most Comprehensive Customer Insights Solution for the AI Era." 7 Jan. 2026.
UserTesting. "UserTesting Announced the Launch of New MCP Servers." 28 Sept. 2026.
Bellamkonda, Shashi. "Salesforce Agrees to Buy Listen Labs to Attach Interviews to Deals." shashi.co, 30 Sept. 2026, www.shashi.co/2026/09/salesforce-agrees-to-buy-listen-labs-to.html.
