Crunchbase

Crunchbase is a San Francisco-based platform providing information and predictive intelligence on private and public companies, including funding rounds, acquisitions, leadership changes, and investor activity.^[1][2] Its content combines live company data, artificial intelligence prediction models, and contributions from a community of more than 80 million users.^[2][7].

Created in 2007 as a database of startups covered by TechCrunch, Crunchbase was spun out of AOL and Verizon in 2015 as an independent company and has since raised venture funding from Emergence Capital, Mayfield Fund, and OMERS Ventures.^[2] The company reports 39 billion live private market signals, more than 30 million verified data updates per year, and prediction models that anticipate 84 percent of real-world funding rounds before they are announced.^[1]

What It Does

Crunchbase maintains a searchable database of companies, people, investors, and events in the startup ecosystem, layered with predictive signals about which companies are likely to raise funding, grow, or go public. Its Scout search interface lets users ask natural-language questions such as which AI companies are most likely to file for an IPO or which fintechs may raise soon.^[1]

The platform serves several distinct audiences: investors screening opportunities, sales teams identifying companies with fresh buying power, analysts mapping markets, wealth managers predicting liquidity events, entrepreneurs finding investors, and product developers building on Crunchbase data through APIs and licensing.^[1]

Data and Methodology

Data is produced by a multi-layer pipeline that combines direct input from companies, engagement signals from the platform's user community, proprietary ingestion systems, trusted third-party sources, and analyst validation, generating over 30 million verified updates per year.^[1]

On top of the raw data, machine learning models trained on nearly two decades of private market history refresh more than 15 million predictions weekly across outcomes such as funding likelihood, growth trajectories, and acquisition probability.^[1] The company states these models predict 84 percent of real-world funding rounds.^[1]

Products

- Crunchbase Pro — paid subscription with advanced search filters, analysis tools, and monitoring alerts for private companies.^[1][2]

- Crunchbase Business — team-oriented features including data export, CRM integration, and API access.^[2]

- Crunchbase API — programmatic access to company, funding, and people data.^[1][2]

- Crunchbase MCP — model context protocol access for connecting Crunchbase data to AI agents and LLM workflows.^[1]

- Data Enrichment and Data Licensing — embedding Crunchbase records and predictions into customer systems and third-party platforms.^[1][2]

- Crunchbase Marketplace — subscriptions to complementary datasets from third-party providers.^[2]

Delivery and Pricing

Products are delivered as web subscriptions with tiered pricing published on the site, plus enterprise agreements for API, enrichment, and licensing customers.^[1][2] Free accounts offer limited access, while paid tiers unlock advanced search, exports, and alerts.^[2]

Distribution partnerships place Crunchbase data inside workflow tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach, and within Perplexity Enterprise Pro under a 2025 agreement; the data is also available through the Databricks Marketplace.^[1][2]

Buyers and Use Cases

Customers include Bayer, OECD, Mixpanel, monday.com, venture firm Atomico, HubSpot for Startups, Picus Capital, and revenue platform Clay, whose users have taken more than 2.6 million actions powered by Crunchbase data.^[1]

Representative results cited by customers include one in three net-new investment opportunities at Atomico being powered by Crunchbase, 25 percent faster due diligence at Picus Capital, and 60 percent faster prospecting reported by revenue teams.^[1] Historically the dataset has been licensed to professional platforms including LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Nasdaq.^[2]

History

Michael Arrington founded Crunchbase in 2007, launching it publicly on May 17, 2007 as a supplementary database tracking startups featured in TechCrunch articles. AOL acquired it in September 2010 as part of its purchase of the TechCrunch network.^[2]

In late 2013 a dispute arose when AOL challenged startup Pro Populi's use of the full Crunchbase dataset despite its earlier distribution under a Creative Commons attribution license; after the Electronic Frontier Foundation represented Pro Populi, AOL allowed continued use but moved future releases to a non-commercial license.^[2]

In September 2015 Crunchbase was spun out of AOL, Verizon, and TechCrunch as an independent company backed by US$8.5 million from Emergence Capital.^[2][3] It rebranded from CrunchBase to Crunchbase in 2016 alongside the launch of Crunchbase Pro, raised an US$18 million Series B from Mayfield Fund in April 2017 while debuting Enterprise and Applications products, opened a third-party data marketplace in February 2018, and raised a US$30 million Series C led by OMERS Ventures in October 2019.^[2][4][6]

In 2025 Crunchbase partnered with Perplexity to supply firmographic and funding data to Perplexity Enterprise Pro and made its predictive intelligence available via Databricks Marketplace.^[2] On January 28, 2026 the company confirmed a cyberattack attributed to the group ShinyHunters, which claimed to have stolen records containing personal data for more than two million users.^[2][5] As of 2026 the company employed roughly 245 people.^[2]