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CB Insights
CB Insights
CB Insights
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CB Insights is a private company with a business analytics platform and global database that provides market intelligence on private companies and investor activities.[3] The platform provides summaries of private companies and investor activities.

Key Information

Operations

[edit]

CB Insights was founded on January 1, 2008, by Anand Sanwal, and Jonathan Sherry and is headquartered in New York.[4]

The company has raised capital in three rounds of funding with the most recent one being $10 million in series A funding raised in 2015, led by the growth stage investment firm RSTP.[5] The company had previously raised $1.15 million in grants from the National Science Foundation for its private company scoring software, called Mosaic.[6]

The company offers business analysis research and reports focused on private markets. The company also publishes a weekly newsletter written by company founder Anand Sanwal in an irreverent style.[7]

The company announced acquisition of VentureSource data assets from Dow Jones & Company on July 15, 2020.[8]

References

[edit]
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CB Insights

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
CB Insights is an American market intelligence platform specializing in for private companies, firms, startups, and emerging technology trends, leveraging , , and to track and analyze over 10 million companies worldwide. Founded in 2009 by Anand Sanwal and Jonathan Sherry, the company originated as ChubbyBrain before rebranding and is headquartered in , with approximately 280 employees as of 2025 serving clients including top firms like , , and . The platform offers tools for sourcing deals, benchmarking competitors, and forecasting market shifts through features like company profiles, investor tracking, and Mosaic Scores that predict startup success based on funding, partnerships, and news signals. CB Insights also publishes data-driven research reports on industries such as , AI, and healthcare, helping users identify investment opportunities and strategic insights. Since its inception, CB Insights has raised over $10 million in and expanded its offerings to include generative AI-powered , including recent partnerships like with Clay for predictive CRM tools, enabling real-time decision-making in and competitive . The company's growth reflects the increasing demand for actionable data in the private markets, positioning it as a key resource for investors, corporations, and analysts navigating dynamic tech ecosystems.

Company Overview

Founding and Early Development

CB Insights was founded in 2009 by Anand Sanwal and Jonathan Sherry in under the initial name ChubbyBrain, operating as a data-as-a-service company backed by grants from the . Sanwal, previously a venture capitalist and innovation fund manager at , and , his co-founder with experience in operations and finance, aimed to address gaps in visibility for private markets by leveraging public data sources. This NSF support provided early validation and resources for developing proprietary data aggregation methods, positioning the company as an innovator in analytics for startups and investors. From its inception, ChubbyBrain focused on collecting and analyzing from diverse sources, including news articles, SEC filings, posts, and job listings, to generate actionable insights on private technology companies and emerging trends. This approach differed from traditional financial databases by emphasizing non-traditional signals, such as online mentions and announcements, to track company and market shifts without relying on self-reported . The goal was to democratize access to intelligence that was previously siloed or manual, helping users identify high-potential startups and investment opportunities in opaque private markets. In early 2010, the company rebranded to CB Insights to adopt a more professional image suitable for enterprise clients, coinciding with the launch of its first subscription-based intelligence platform. This product offered users searchable databases, trend reports, and delivered via a web interface, targeting venture capitalists, investment bankers, and teams. The transition marked a shift from experimental data tools to a commercial offering, with initial subscriptions priced for professional use and emphasizing ease of access to curated private market data. A pivotal early milestone came in 2010 when CB Insights secured its initial external funding through a grant, which facilitated broader data coverage and algorithmic refinements for assessing company health. This non-dilutive capital allowed the team to scale operations without venture backing, sustaining growth through revenue from early subscribers while refining core technologies like models for . The grant underscored the company's alignment with NSF priorities in advancing data-driven innovation for economic insights.

Leadership and Headquarters

CB Insights was co-founded in 2009 by Anand Sanwal and Jonathan Sherry. Sanwal, who previously managed American Express's $50 million Chairman's Innovation Fund and led venture investments there, served as CEO from 2010 until January 2024, when he transitioned to the role of Executive Chair to focus on strategic advisory and AI initiatives while maintaining deep involvement in the company's direction. Sherry, with a background in product development and operations, helped scale the company to significant revenue and over 250 employees before departing in recent years to build a stealth enterprise technology startup; he remains a board member. Following Sanwal's transition, Manlio Carrelli assumed the role of CEO in 2024, bringing nearly 20 years of experience in leading SaaS companies across consumer and enterprise software, including prior positions as CEO, , and at public and late-stage firms. This leadership change emphasizes continuity in CB Insights' data-driven strategy, leveraging Carrelli's expertise in growth and AI to advance the platform's predictive intelligence capabilities. The executive team includes key roles such as Karl Kong, who oversees product innovation in market analytics, and Mike Ruggieri, whose work highlights the company's focus on AI and data infrastructure for intelligence tools. These leaders bring specialized knowledge in AI integration and market intelligence, supporting the firm's mission to analyze vast datasets on private companies and trends. CB Insights is headquartered in New York City at 498 Seventh Avenue, 12th Floor. As of September 2025, the company employs approximately 284 people, reflecting a lean structure dedicated to technology and research. The board of directors includes co-founder Jonathan Sherry and board member Kurt Reisenberg, a veteran in executive board governance from his time at , providing oversight on strategic growth and market positioning.

Products and Services

Core Platform Features

The CB Insights platform serves as a comprehensive market intelligence tool, leveraging AI and machine learning to provide actionable insights on private and public companies. At its core, the platform aggregates and analyzes vast datasets to deliver predictive signals, enabling users to evaluate investment opportunities, competitive landscapes, and strategic decisions. A key feature is the Mosaic Score, a proprietary AI-driven metric that assesses the health and growth potential of private companies on a scale of 0 to 1,000, with higher scores indicating stronger prospects for success. This score is calculated as a weighted average of four factors: Momentum, which evaluates performance through signals like news sentiment, social media activity, and web traffic; Money, which analyzes financial strength via funding history, burn rate, and investor quality; Market, which gauges industry conditions using trends in funding, deals, and exit activity; and Management, which scores the team's prior accomplishments and experience. By incorporating non-traditional data such as partnerships and news sentiment alongside funding details, the Mosaic Score provides a holistic, predictive view of company viability, helping users prioritize targets for investment or acquisition. The platform's tools further enhance this capability by forecasting key events and trends through models trained on millions of points, including patents, funding rounds, and market signals. For instance, the Exit Probability feature predicts the likelihood of a private company undergoing an acquisition or (IPO) within the next 24 months, drawing on historical patterns, sector M&A rates, track records, and company momentum to generate probabilistic scores. These tools also support broader , such as identifying emerging hotspots or potential disruptions, allowing users to anticipate shifts in competitive dynamics. CB Insights boasts extensive coverage, tracking over 10 million double-verified company profiles worldwide, encompassing private firms, , and markets. This includes estimates for private companies derived from year-by-year modeling and source transparency, detailed networks with histories and focus areas, and competitor mapping that identifies rivals based on shared customers, market presence, and activity levels. Additional data points cover patents with topic modeling for IP trends, full round histories including valuations, headcount changes, and M&A/IPO probabilities, providing a robust foundation for intelligence across technology sectors. Integration features facilitate seamless incorporation of this intelligence into user workflows, with access and data feeds enabling real-time embedding into systems like large language models, data lakes, and CRM platforms. Through such as with Clay, the platform integrates directly with to inject predictive scores and alerts into sales pipelines, triggering notifications on events like funding rounds or acquisition signals for immediate action. This -driven approach supports customized applications, from automated queries via ChatCBI to enhanced in and strategies.

Research and Analytics Tools

CB Insights offers a suite of advanced research and analytics tools powered by , designed to provide deep insights into private markets, company dynamics, and emerging trends beyond basic . These tools leverage proprietary datasets and generative AI to automate complex analyses, enabling users to generate actionable intelligence on relationships, strategies, and sector evolutions. GenAI Instant Insights, launched in 2025, utilizes generative AI to deliver instant summaries of company relationships, competitive strategies, and market shifts by analyzing public earnings calls and proprietary data. This tool automates the extraction of financial patterns and commercial ties, such as partnerships and acquisition signals, producing comprehensive reports that previously required days of manual effort. For example, it can highlight strategic pivots in a company's product roadmap or detect emerging threats from competitors' announcements, boosting analyst productivity by up to six times. The Team of Agents represents a specialized of AI agents, introduced in June 2025, that continuously scan for customer and vendor connections, potential acquisition opportunities, and across global markets. Comprising 11 initial agents deployable individually or as a group, this suite translates vast datasets into targeted actions for M&A scouting, partnership evaluation, and go-to-market strategies, with enterprise customers reporting significant time savings in deal sourcing. These agents integrate seamlessly with tools like to uncover hidden signals, such as early indicators of supplier disruptions or rival expansions. Market maps and trend scanners provide visual analytics tools that map out sector landscapes using CB Insights' proprietary datasets, covering areas like AI agents, , and . These interactive visualizations organize thousands of companies into categories, illustrating investment flows, key players, and momentum scores to forecast category growth. For instance, the AI agent market map (as of November 2025) highlights over 400 firms across 16 categories like autonomous workflows, drawing on real-time funding and partnership data to identify high-potential niches without exhaustive manual research. Trend scanners complement this by monitoring velocity in emerging categories, alerting users to shifts in adoption or innovation hotspots. Post-2020 enhancements to valuation and tools stem from expanded integrations, offering detailed of deal structures and metrics. Users can benchmark private valuations against peers using algorithmic models that factor in rounds, exit multiples, and market comparables, providing context for over tracked deals since 2020. These features include return projections and structure breakdowns, such as equity splits in acquisitions, to inform strategic decisions. They integrate briefly with the core Score for holistic health assessments, enhancing predictive accuracy on growth potential.

Growth and Funding

Funding History

CB Insights has raised a total of approximately $11.15 million in funding, consisting of a single and an early grant. The company's primary funding came in November with a $10 million led by RSTP, a growth-stage firm. This was used to scale data operations, enhance capabilities, and support team growth, aiming to double the staff from around 60 employees. Prior to the Series A, CB Insights received a $1.15 million grant from the to support initial research and development, particularly for its private company scoring algorithm. Following the Series A, the company has not pursued additional major funding rounds, instead focusing on bootstrapped growth to achieve profitability. By 2024, CB Insights reported $145.8 million in annual recurring revenue and served over 500 customers, reflecting a shift toward self-sustained expansion.

Acquisitions and Expansion

In July 2020, CB Insights acquired the data assets of VentureSource from Dow Jones, integrating a comprehensive dataset on venture capital markets that dates back to 1983 and includes details on private company valuations, management teams, and funding rounds. This move enhanced the company's ability to provide in-depth analysis for valuation modeling and deal tracking in private markets. In September 2020, CB Insights further expanded its technological scope by acquiring Blockdata, a Netherlands-based platform specializing in intelligence, which added advanced tracking capabilities for investments, ecosystems, and technologies to its core offerings. The acquisition also led to the establishment of an office to support European operations. These strategic purchases significantly broadened CB Insights' , enabling the tracking of nearly 30,000 corporate acquisitions of technology companies since 2020 and supporting enhanced global coverage. They facilitated operational expansion, including the opening of a office in early 2021 to better serve European clients and partnerships. Post-2023, the company deepened its focus on enterprise AI tools through platform enhancements that leverage for predictive market intelligence and trend forecasting, aligning with its ongoing research on AI trends. By 2024, CB Insights had grown its workforce to 296 employees, reflecting sustained scaling in response to demand for advanced analytics.

Market Impact

Clients and Partnerships

CB Insights serves over 500 enterprise clients worldwide as of 2024, leveraging its platform for deal sourcing, , and investment decision-making. Notable customers include Block (formerly Square), a technology firm; ADP, a and provider; and the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, a healthcare innovation program. Among these, integrates CB Insights data directly into its CRM system to track companies, trends, and trigger events, enabling real-time alerts for funding rounds, acquisitions, and other market shifts. Similarly, the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator has utilized the platform to review twice as many potential investment opportunities, accelerating its evaluation of healthcare startups and influencing advancements in medical technology. CB Insights maintains a robust , including collaborations with media outlets that incorporate its data into reporting, such as for insights on AI market penetration and trends. The company also engages with industry events like Disrupt, where its research informs discussions on and . In 2025, CB Insights announced a with Clay, a platform, to embed predictive intelligence on over 10 million private companies into CRM workflows, enhancing revenue growth tools for go-to-market teams. The firm's global reach is evident in its expanding partnerships across and , with a 2025 emphasis on AI-driven M&A advisory services to support international deal-making and .

Key Publications and Rankings

CB Insights produces a range of influential research reports and rankings that analyze trends, , and startup performance, drawing on its database of , M&A, and . The firm's flagship AI 100 list, launched in 2017, annually identifies the 100 most promising private companies worldwide, selected algorithmically from over 17,000 nominees based on factors like technology innovation, market traction, and . The 2025 edition, marking the ninth year, emphasized advancements in AI agent platforms and (21 companies), along with AI , , and physical AI technologies, with notable inclusions in healthcare-focused AI for management and applications. The State of AI and State of Venture series provide quarterly and annual insights into investment patterns and sector dynamics. The State of AI Q3 2025 report highlighted a resilient funding landscape with over $45 billion invested globally despite a 22% quarter-over-quarter decline in deals, driven by mega-rounds and averaging $49.3 million per deal year-to-date; it noted increased consolidation in enterprise AI. Complementing this, the State of Venture Q3 2025 report documented $95.6 billion in global venture funding—the highest quarterly total since 2022—and a record $94.5 billion raised by decacorns year-to-date, with AI capturing 51% of all funding for the first time on pace annually. The annual Tech Trends 2025 report outlined 15 pivotal shifts, including a doubling of AI's share in corporate tech M&A since 2020, alongside AI agents enabling autonomous transactions and AI tools for disease management through early detection and patient . Additional publications include the Smart Money 2025 report, which ranks the top 25 firms based on a decade of portfolio outcomes, round leadership, and capital efficiency via the , identifying outperformers like Accel and in AI and cybersecurity. In partnership with the , which provided $1.15 million in funding, CB Insights developed Mosaic Scores—a machine learning-based system offering public benchmarks (0-1,000 scale) for startup health across momentum, market, money, and management factors, enabling investors to compare companies against peers using data like and funding history. These publications exert significant influence on the venture ecosystem, frequently cited in major media outlets such as and analyses to shape investor strategies and market narratives. For instance, CB Insights' reporting helped contextualize the record $621 billion in global venture funding in 2021, more than double the prior year's total. In 2025, the firm's analyses underscored post-2024 surges in AI activity, with funding on track to exceed $200 billion annually—double 2024's $108 billion—and M&A deals reaching 172 in Q3 alone, signaling accelerated consolidation in agents and infrastructure.

References

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  2. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cb-insights
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  5. https://leadiq.com/c/cb-insights/5a1d84d824000024005f85dc/employee-directory
  6. https://libguides.stanford.edu/library/cbinsights
  7. https://www.cbinsights.com/research/
  8. https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/companyresearch/cbinsights
  9. https://www.cbinsights.com/clay-pr
  10. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/cb-insights/__AjUMmA68X1adTPWe5P_SKYCvufUss_JxPt1ktcmscnM
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  49. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/09/16/cb-insights-buys-blockdata-to-build-out-blockchain-data-offering
  50. https://hkifoa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-tech-trends-cbinsights.pdf
  51. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10293034/filing-history
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