Expert network adoption hits 11,200 firms as corporates outnumber funds

Expert networks now serve roughly 11,200 client firms globally in 2026, with corporates the largest segment by headcount and consulting firms the largest by wallet, according to Inex One CEO Max Friberg. The mix matters: the buyer base looks nothing like the Wall Street caricature of the industry.

Corporates make up about 47% of client firms but only 12% of spend. Consulting flips that ratio, 9% of clients and 46% of spend. Investment and capital markets firms sit in the middle at roughly 44% of clients and 42% of spend.

What the spend split actually says

The per-client spend gap between consulting and corporates is roughly 20x on Inex One's numbers. That tracks with how the two segments use experts. A consulting firm running a commercial due diligence for a private equity client will burn 30-plus expert calls in two weeks, billed through to the sponsor. A corporate strategy team using experts for a market-entry question or a competitor read might do five calls a quarter and absorb the cost on its own P&L.

Investment and capital markets, the segment that built the industry (hedge funds, long-only managers, private equity diligence teams), is no longer the majority buyer by count. It is still close to half the spend, which is the number that matters for the expert network P&L. Hedge fund analysts remain the highest-intensity individual users: multiple calls per week, repeat experts, tight compliance review.

The fragmentation problem

Inex One reports the proliferation of specialized expert networks (industry-vertical, geography-specific, function-specific) has created a procurement headache for buyers who now juggle contracts, compliance reviews, and invoicing across a dozen-plus vendors. That is the gap Inex One sells into: a single dashboard pointed at 25-plus underlying networks.

This is the same consolidation pattern that played out in alt-data a few years back. Buyers tolerate vendor sprawl until the admin overhead exceeds the marginal insight, then a meta-layer (or an acquirer) shows up.

What to watch

The number to track over the next two reporting cycles is whether the corporate segment's share of spend rises off the 12% floor. If it does, expert networks are genuinely becoming a mainstream corporate research tool. If it stays flat while client count keeps growing, corporates are sampling the product but not committing budget, and the industry's growth story remains a consulting and capital markets story dressed up in broader clothes.