Who we are and how this works
Independent peer-based research, built for and by the Enterprise AI buyer.
Arcana measures and benchmarks the reality of how F1000 enterprises buy, deploy, and govern AI across lines of business.
The quarterly AI Enterprise Pulse™ investigates AI adoption, outcomes, and spend across six major categories — alongside vendor performance, switching intent, and emerging technology adoption. Peer community members receive their AI Vital Stats™ Tear Sheet, the Pulse report, which includes four proprietary indices: Spend, Yield, Heat, and Vendor Vulnerability — spanning both legacy software and AI providers.
Enterprise leadership and the Board leverage this data-driven research as the default platform for evaluating their AI estate against a peer group. Quarterly execution affords unmatched historical data to measure against, delivered with no spin and no bias.
Independent from day one.
Ken Male
Senior Partner · Research
Mr. Male is Senior Partner at Arcana Research, where he creates and contextualizes data-driven research and benchmarks for the AI Enterprise Pulse™ and its proprietary indices — including the AI Spend Index™, AI Yield Index™, and AI Vulnerability Index™.
Across 30 years in IT Research, Benchmarking & Data — in leadership roles spanning Gartner, Giga, Apptio, and Jupiter — Mr. Male has served and advised Global 2000 leadership (spanning IT, Finance, Sourcing, Sales & Marketing), institutional investors, and technology providers. He has keynoted dozens of global events and is a regular source for CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, the Financial Times, Forbes, and InformationWeek.
In 2001 he founded TheInfoPro (TIP) with Gideon Gartner as a Board member and investor, where they pioneered factual, peer-based IT research devoid of analyst spin or bias — an approach that became known as the “Voice of the Enterprise.” The data source was personal relationships developed with thousands of G2000 IT decision makers who participated in detailed studies of key tech sectors in 6-month cycles, or “Waves,” affording unmatched historical data for comparison. TIP was acquired by S&P Global Market Intelligence. He subsequently founded spend analytics firm CXO Nexus.
Ian Kar
Managing Partner & Cofounder
Mr. Kar is Managing Partner and Cofounder of Arcana Research, where he leads product development, platform architecture, and go-to-market strategy. He designed and built the Arcana platform and its underlying research infrastructure.
Mr. Kar has spent over a decade identifying and building at the frontier of emerging technology markets. His writing and research on fintech and enterprise technology has been published in The Atlantic, Quartz, Newsweek, American Banker, the World Economic Forum, and Stanford Business Review. He co-founded Fintech Today, a research and community platform for fintech operators and founders—with members from institutions like Goldman Sachs and Andreessen Horowitz—which was acquired in 2022. Earlier in his career, he was a product manager at Acorns, a consumer finance platform backed by PayPal and BlackRock. His work has been cited by Bloomberg Businessweek, CNBC, Barron’s, and TIME, and referenced in Morgan Stanley analyst notes.