Human cognition is remarkable. Language is its most visible trace — in texts, speeches, narratives, and the metaphors societies use to make sense of the world.
At Crow Intelligence, we study that trace. We use computational methods and cognitive science to understand how language shapes thought, how narratives drive decisions, and how technology is transforming both.
We believe in open inquiry, rigorous method, and the value of understanding ourselves more clearly.
What We Do
We conduct original research and take on analysis commissions for organisations that need deep expertise in language, cognition, and data.
Our work is analytical and advisory. We specialise in the hard problems that come before and after the code — specification, evaluation, and interpretation. We help organisations think clearly about what to build, whether it is working, and what the results actually mean. Increasingly we apply this same lens to technical due diligence for venture funds evaluating AI and NLP investments.
If your organisation is working on a problem that involves text, language, narrative, or the behaviour of AI systems, we would like to hear from you.
Due diligence for venture funds
We provide independent technical due diligence on AI and NLP startups for early-stage venture funds in Central Europe. Our work covers the questions investors most often cannot answer from a pitch deck — whether the technology is real, whether the data is defensible, whether the team can hold the line, and whether the company is ready for the EU AI Act.
The AI Adoption Audit
Most internal AI tools fail for human reasons — not technical ones. We audit the AI tools that have stalled inside your organisation: we find why your people aren't using them, and set out precisely what to change. A fixed-scope diagnostic, typically two to four weeks, for scale-ups and enterprise teams whose AI feature shipped but isn't landing.
Projects
The Wealth of Nations — 250th Anniversary Digital Edition
An interactive exploration of Adam Smith's 1776 masterwork. Topic modeling, named entity recognition, rhetorical metaphor analysis, and full-text search across all five books.
The Nagel Index — Public vs. Private Personality
Big Five personality analysis of political leaders, measuring the gap between their public speeches and private correspondence. Inspired by Thomas Nagel's essay on ruthlessness in public life.
Market Metaphors — Kindleberger Phases × Narrative Economics
Tracing the evolution of metaphorical language in 158,666 financial news headlines (2009–2020) across five crisis events, mapping metaphor domains to the Minsky–Kindleberger panic cycle.
Aporia — Visual Essays
Aporia is our series of long-form visual essays — arguments made with data, built on our own open-source tools. Each piece reopens a question we thought was settled.
The great modern crimes are public crimes
Big Five personality analysis of seven American leaders, public speeches vs. private writings.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
A visual reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus as a handwritten spiral.
Where does the mind end and the world begin?
Two reinforcement-learning agents testing Clark & Chalmers' extended-mind hypothesis.
Open Source
We build and maintain open-source Python tooling for text and language analysis: chronowords for semantic shift over time, kenon for co-occurrence networks, and corvus as a project template.
Meet Our Team
Zoltán Varjú
Co-Founder, Crow Intelligence. Two decades at the intersection of language, AI, and data. Technical due diligence and AI advisory for funds and startups; co-founded and exited Complytron (acquired by SEON, 2023).
Orsolya Putz, PhD
Cognitive Scientist & AI Engineer. PhD in Cognitive Linguistics. Adjunct Professor at the Technical University of Budapest (BME).
Collaborators & Partners
We have worked with organisations across green finance, pharma intelligence, investigative journalism, linguistics, cognitive psychology, urban studies, the nonprofit sector, and public transparency.
RxClarity
GL1
Precognox
K-Monitor
The Future Fox
nyest.hu
HUN-REN ICNP
Manning
Urbanum
Habitat for Humanity
Széchenyi University
Get in touch
If your organisation is wrestling with a problem in language, cognition, or data — or with an internal AI tool that isn't landing — we'd like to hear about it. Write to us, or book a short call.