PitchBook

About PitchBook

PitchBook is a Seattle-based financial data and software company that publishes research and analytics on venture capital, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions worldwide. Founded in 2007 by John Gabbert, the firm was created to provide granular deal intelligence for private market investors, assembling disparate private market filings into a structured database. Its products include the PitchBook Platform, PitchBook News and Analysis, and a widely used Excel plugin, serving tens of thousands of professionals at venture capital firms, private equity shops, investment banks, and corporate development teams. PitchBook has operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. since December 2016, when Morningstar acquired the remaining 80 percent of the company for approximately $180 million in cash, valuing the business at $225 million. Under Morningstar's ownership, PitchBook has grown to more than 3,000 researchers, technologists, and analysts across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Founding by John Gabbert

John Gabbert launched PitchBook in Seattle in 2007 after leading the Private Equity Analyst newsletter at Thomson Reuters. Drawing on that experience, he set out to assemble the fragmented filings, announcements, and disclosures of the private markets into a single structured database that investors could actually use. The timing was prescient: private equity and venture capital were growing rapidly, yet the data describing them remained scattered across regulatory filings, press releases, and proprietary sources. Gabbert's insight was that private market investors needed the same kind of comprehensive, searchable data infrastructure that public market investors took for granted. The company released the first version of the PitchBook Platform in 2009, and added daily newsletters and analyst reports summarizing fundraising and exit trends for clients that included venture capital partnerships, corporate development teams, and investment banks.

The PitchBook Platform

The PitchBook Platform is the company's flagship product, a financial data and software system that provides transparency into the capital markets to help professionals discover and execute opportunities. The platform collects and analyzes detailed data on the entire venture capital, private equity, and M&A landscape, including public and private companies, investors, funds, investments, exits, and people. Complementary products include PitchBook News and Analysis, the company's editorial operation covering private markets, and the PitchBook Excel Plugin, which embeds the database directly into the spreadsheets where finance professionals do their modeling. The company also makes its data available through raw data feeds and APIs for quantitative users. The platform's depth, covering millions of companies, hundreds of thousands of investors, and millions of deals, has made it an essential tool for deal professionals who need to track private company valuations, fundraising, and transactions.

Morningstar's investment and acquisition

Morningstar was an early believer in PitchBook, investing $1.2 million as a Series A preferred investor in September 2009 and another $10 million as a Series B preferred investor in January 2016, building a 20 percent stake. In October 2016, Morningstar agreed to acquire the remaining 80 percent for approximately $180 million in cash, subject to working capital adjustments, in a transaction that valued PitchBook at $225 million. At the time of the deal, PitchBook had $31.1 million in revenue for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2016, and more than 300 employees in Seattle, New York, and London. The transaction closed on December 1, 2016. Following the deal, PitchBook maintained its brand and identity and continued to be led by founder and chief executive officer John Gabbert. Morningstar president Kunal Kapoor, who had served on PitchBook's board since 2012, described data as Morningstar's sweet spot and said the company looked forward to helping investors navigate the evolving private markets.

Growth under Morningstar

Under Morningstar's ownership, PitchBook grew dramatically. The company expanded from a few hundred employees to a global workforce of more than 3,000 researchers, technologists, and analysts in North America, Europe, and Asia, with offices in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London, and Hong Kong. Its client base grew to more than 70,000 professionals around the world. PitchBook integrated Morningstar's public equity data and research into its platform, adding coverage of tens of thousands of public companies and hundreds of thousands of Morningstar equity research reports and models, creating a combined public-private data offering. The integration allowed PitchBook customers to benchmark private investments against public market comparables within a single platform, a capability that became increasingly valuable as private markets grew to record levels. PitchBook's growth validated Morningstar's investment, and the business became one of the fastest-growing products within the parent company.

PitchBook News and Analysis

PitchBook's newsroom covers private equity, venture capital, and merger-and-acquisition markets, producing journalism that complements the data platform's intelligence. The editorial operation publishes daily news, in-depth reports, and analyst commentary on fundraising trends, deal activity, valuations, and exits across the private markets. The newsroom gives PitchBook a voice in the industry conversation, with its research frequently cited by financial media covering the private capital world. The combination of proprietary data and original journalism distinguishes PitchBook from pure data vendors: its analysts can illustrate market trends with both numbers and narrative, producing the kinds of reports on venture funding cycles and private equity deal flow that become reference points for the industry. The news operation reflects Gabbert's original vision of serving private market investors with both structured data and informed analysis.

Leadership transition

John Gabbert led PitchBook from its 2007 founding through its growth into a global data business, remaining as founder and chief executive officer after the Morningstar acquisition. In 2024, Gabbert planned his departure from the chief executive role, and Morningstar named Rod Diefendorf as President and Chief Operating Officer to lead PitchBook. The transition marked a generational shift for a company that had been founder-led for seventeen years, while preserving continuity through Morningstar's ownership and the deep bench of executives Gabbert had built. Under Diefendorf's leadership, PitchBook has continued to refine and expand its private market data and research while deepening the integration with Morningstar's public market offerings. The company's mission of delivering meaningful insights into the evolving capital markets has remained constant through the leadership change.

Leveraged Commentary & Data acquisition

PitchBook expanded its reach into credit markets through Morningstar's acquisition of Leveraged Commentary & Data, a provider of leveraged loan market news, data, and analysis. Nearly 60 LCD employees joined Morningstar as part of the PitchBook team and the Morningstar Indexes group, strengthening the combined company's coverage of the debt markets that fund so much private equity activity. The LCD acquisition illustrated the logic of building a comprehensive private capital data platform: leveraged loans are the lifeblood of buyout financing, and integrating loan data with PitchBook's private equity deal coverage gave clients a fuller picture of the leveraged finance ecosystem. The transaction was funded through a combination of cash on hand and Morningstar's credit facility, reflecting the parent company's continued investment in PitchBook's expansion.

Market position

PitchBook occupies a central position in the private markets data industry, competing with firms such as CB Insights, Crunchbase, and Preqin while differentiating itself through depth of deal coverage and integration with public market data. Its datasets track millions of deals across venture capital, private equity, M&A, debt, and IPOs, along with hundreds of thousands of funds and investors. The company's private market focus proved well timed: as institutional investors poured money into alternatives over the past two decades, demand for transparency into private company valuations, fund performance, and deal flow surged. PitchBook's combination of the platform, newsroom, and analyst reports serves the full workflow of deal professionals, from sourcing to diligence to portfolio monitoring. Its status as a Morningstar subsidiary gives it the backing of one of the world's leading independent investment research firms.

Headquarters and outlook

PitchBook is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the city where John Gabbert founded the company in 2007, with additional offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Hong Kong. Its official website is pitchbook.com, where professionals can explore the platform, read its news and research, and learn about its data offerings. As private markets continue to grow and serve as a pipeline for tomorrow's most influential public companies, PitchBook's role as a provider of transparency into those markets becomes ever more important. The company's evolution from a Seattle startup assembling private market filings into a 3,000-person global data business owned by Morningstar stands as one of the notable success stories of financial technology, built on the enduring insight that investors need reliable data wherever capital flows.