CB Insights is a private company with a business analytics platform and global database that provides market intelligence on private companies and investor activities. The platform is targeted at

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

investment banking Investment banking is an advisory-based financial service for institutional investors, corporations, governments, and similar clients. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by und ...

angel investing An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups A startup or start-up is a company or p ...

, and

consulting A consultant (from "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Cons ...

professionals by providing insights about high growth private companies.

Founding

CB Insights was founded on January 1, 2008, by Anand Sanwal, and Jonathan Sherry and is headquartered in New York. CB Insights uses a combination of

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

tools and algorithms, as well as sentiment analysis on publicly available signals to gather and analyze data about private companies, investors, and industries.

Funding

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. The company had previously raised $1.15 million in grants from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

for its private company scoring software, called Mosaic.

Clients and partners

Some of CB Insights clients include Cisco, Salesforce, Castrol, Gartner, as well as top-tier VCs including, NEA, Upfront Ventures, RRE, and FirstMark Capital. The company periodically partners with companies such as

The New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media corporation that publishes ''The New York Times'' and its associated publications such as ''The New York Times International Edition'' and other media properties. The New York Times Company's ...

, and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, to generate reports on the health of private companies, growth startups, and venture capital across industries. CB Insights' primary competitors include Crunchbase, and Owler.

CB Insights AI 100

Since 2017, CB Insights publishes the annual global rating of companies in artificial intelligence classified into multiple categories. In 2025, the categories included Horizontal AI (featuring

Cybersecurity Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and networks from thr ...

, Process automation, and content generation), Vertical AI (featuring

Life sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, ...

Aerospace Aerospace is a term used to collectively refer to the atmosphere and outer space. Aerospace activity is very diverse, with a multitude of commercial, industrial, and military applications. Aerospace engineering consists of aeronautics and astron ...

& defense, and Gaming & visual assets), and AI Infrastructure (featuring Observability & evaluation, Accelerated computing & hardware, and

Data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

.) In 2024, CB Insights added a Cybersecurity category to the AI 100, with companies including Binarly and Wraithwatch. In 2025, Lakera, Reality Defender, and Dropzone AI were selected for the Cybersecurity category.

Acquisitions

The company announced acquisition of VentureSource data assets from

Dow Jones & Company Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (also known simply as Dow Jones) is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp, and led by CEO Almar Latour. The company publishes ''The Wall Street Journal'', '' Barron's'', '' MarketWatch'', ''Mansion Global'' ...

on July 15, 2020. The assets will add to the company's private market coverage capabilities.

References