CB Insights

About CB Insights

CB Insights is a New York-based market intelligence company whose business analytics platform and global database provide market intelligence on private companies and investor activities. Founded in 2008 by Anand Sanwal and Jonathan Sherry, the company uses big data and machine learning to track financings, exits, and emerging technology trends, serving professionals in private equity, venture capital, investment banking, and consulting. Its research reports, unicorn startup lists, and industry analyses have made it one of the most cited sources on the startup economy, while its founder's irreverent weekly newsletter became essential reading in venture capital. The company raised $1.15 million in grants from the National Science Foundation for its private company scoring software and $10 million in Series A funding in 2015, and in 2020 it acquired the VentureSource data assets from Dow Jones & Company. CB Insights publishes at cbinsights.com.

Founding and the ChubbyBrain era

CB Insights was founded on January 1, 2008, by Anand Sanwal and Jonathan Sherry in New York. Sanwal had previously managed the $50 million Chairman's Innovation Fund at American Express, focusing on investment optimization and strategic business analysis, with earlier experience in mergers and acquisitions at a private equity firm and roles at Kozmo.com and Deloitte Consulting. His frustration with the inadequate information resources available while working in venture capital planted the seed for the company. The firm launched publicly in 2009 under the name ChubbyBrain, a moniker that, as TechCrunch noted, did not go over well; the company quickly rebranded to CB Insights, a name that invited its own confusion given its similarity to CrunchBase. The early company set out to be a Bloomberg for private companies, tracking financings, exits, venture capital, and angel investment, along with the trends underlying that data.

The Mosaic software and NSF grants

A key early milestone was the company's development of Mosaic, its private company scoring software, funded by $1.15 million in grants from the National Science Foundation. The NSF funding, which was equity-free government investment in the company's technology, supported the development of algorithms that could assess private companies using publicly available signals. The Mosaic approach exemplified the company's data philosophy: rather than relying solely on reported financings, CB Insights would use natural language processing and machine learning to analyze unstructured data sources such as news articles, patent filings, and social media. This technological foundation differentiated the company from traditional research firms and positioned it to scale its coverage of private companies far beyond what manual analyst teams could achieve.

Funding and growth

CB Insights raised capital in three rounds of funding, culminating in $10 million in Series A funding in 2015, led by the growth-stage investment firm RSTP. The Series A validated the company's business model after years of bootstrapped growth: by the time of the raise, the company had grown to millions in annual revenue and signed more than 300 customers using its analytics platform to source deals, analyze competition, and build reports. The company expanded its product line with offerings such as CB Insights For Sales, a lead generation tool that allowed B2B sales teams to input their customer lists and receive ranked lists of similar prospect companies. Under Sanwal's leadership as chief executive, the company grew to an estimated 400 employees and an estimated $100 million in revenue by the early 2020s, serving Fortune 500 companies, venture capital firms, and government agencies.

The VentureSource acquisition

On July 15, 2020, CB Insights announced the acquisition of the VentureSource data assets from Dow Jones & Company. VentureSource was one of the legacy databases of venture capital activity, and its acquisition gave CB Insights a deeper historical dataset on venture financings and strengthened its competitive position in private market data. The deal united a traditional data asset with CB Insights' machine-learning-driven platform, combining decades of curated venture records with the company's algorithmic approach to company intelligence. The acquisition reflected the consolidation underway in financial data, as newer technology-driven firms absorbed the datasets of older information businesses. For CB Insights' clients in venture capital, private equity, and corporate strategy, the enriched dataset improved the platform's coverage of historical financings and investor activity.

Research and the unicorn lists

CB Insights became widely known for its research reports and its lists of unicorn startups, the private companies valued at $1 billion or more. Its reports on trends such as the on-demand economy were covered extensively by technology media, and its data-driven analyses of emerging industries became reference points for investors and journalists. The company's research operation produces business analysis focused on private markets, using its database to identify patterns in funding, acquisitions, and technological development. The platform provides summaries of private companies and investor activities, targeted at private equity, venture capital, investment banking, angel investing, and consulting professionals seeking insights about high-growth private companies. Clients have included Cisco, Salesforce, Castrol, and Gartner, as well as top-tier venture firms including NEA, Upfront Ventures, RRE, and FirstMark Capital.

The newsletter and Sanwal's voice

A distinctive asset of CB Insights has been the weekly newsletter written by founder Anand Sanwal in an irreverent, often humorous style. The newsletter's engaging commentary on startups, venture capital, and emerging technology earned Sanwal a substantial following on social media platforms including LinkedIn and X, establishing him as a prominent and unconventional voice in the business world. The newsletter served as both a marketing engine and a brand statement, demonstrating the company's data-driven approach while entertaining its readers. Sanwal's thought leadership extended beyond the newsletter to speaking engagements and media appearances, where he discussed the evolution of the company from a data provider for venture capitalists into a broader market intelligence platform. He also co-founded the Formidable Fellowship, an initiative providing grants to middle and high school entrepreneurs.

Technology and methodology

CB Insights' platform is built on a combination of big data tools, algorithms, and machine learning applied to private company intelligence. The company gathers and analyzes data about private companies, investors, and industries using natural language processing and sentiment analysis on publicly available signals, including news articles, patent filings, and social media. This approach allows the platform to track thousands of emerging companies and technology trends without relying entirely on self-reported data. The methodology reflects Sanwal's original insight as an investor: that data-driven decision-making about private companies required new kinds of information infrastructure. As artificial intelligence transformed data businesses in the 2020s, the company's machine-learning foundation positioned it to incorporate new techniques for extracting insight from unstructured information.

Market position

CB Insights competes in the private market intelligence space with firms including PitchBook, Crunchbase, and Preqin, differentiating itself through its technology-driven approach and its brand as a research-led media voice. While PitchBook emphasizes depth of deal data for finance professionals and Crunchbase offers broad company profiles with a free tier, CB Insights carved out a position as the intelligence platform for corporate strategy and innovation teams as well as investors. Its evolution from serving venture capitalists to facilitating connections between technology companies, data, and enterprise decision-makers broadened its addressable market. The company's content marketing, from its early days, drove organic growth by giving away valuable research, a strategy that built its brand among the startup and venture communities of Silicon Valley and New York.

Headquarters and outlook

CB Insights is headquartered in New York, New York, where Sanwal and Sherry founded the company in 2008. Its official website is cbinsights.com, home to its platform, research reports, and newsletter. From its awkwardly named ChubbyBrain beginnings to its status as a nine-figure-revenue intelligence business, the company's trajectory illustrates how the hunger for private company data created an entirely new category of financial information. As private markets continue to grow in economic importance and as artificial intelligence reshapes how data is gathered and analyzed, CB Insights' combination of machine-learning technology, proprietary datasets including VentureSource, and a distinctive editorial voice positions it to remain a central source of intelligence on the innovation economy.