Crunchbase

Crunchbase began in 2007 as a homegrown TechCrunch project indexing the startups featured in TechCrunch articles.⁠[1]

In February 2008 version 2 was rebuilt in Ruby on RailsRuby on RailsRuby on Rails (often shortened to Rails) is an open-source, full-stack web application framework written in the Ruby programming language that builds database-backed web applications following the model–view–controller (MVC) pattern. Created by David Heinemeier Hansson and first publicly released in 2004, it is known for design principles such as “convention over configuration,” and companies including GitHub and Shopify use it in production.Open the full entry and let readers edit or add companies, people and investors; it then listed 1,515 companies, 4,499 people and 762 investors.⁠[2]

In June 2008 the site added an interactive map, advanced search, job listings and “Milestones” records.⁠[3]

In July 2008 CrunchBase opened a free, read-only JSON API to all developers and planned to publish its data under a Creative Commons Attribution license or similar terms.⁠[4]

By February 2009 the database held more than 15,000 companies, 26,000 people and 1,700 investors, run as a moderated wiki open to all contributors.⁠[5]

On September 28, 2010, AOL announced at TechCrunch Disrupt that it was acquiring TechCrunch, without disclosing the price.⁠[6]

McConnell recalled that AOL valued CrunchBase at zero when it made the acquisition.⁠[7]

In April 2014 a new CrunchBase launched with a card-based design and a “business graph” linking people, companies and funding, ending anonymous editing; the team numbered 23 and API partners exceeded 7,000.⁠[8]

On September 8, 2015, CrunchBase was revealed to be finalizing a term sheet with Emergence Capital to become independent; it had 25 employees and about 2 million unique visitors a month.⁠[9]

On September 22 the spinout was completed, with Emergence Capital as controlling investor and AOL/Verizon keeping a stake; the company planned to build a B2B data-licensing business while keeping a free tier.⁠[10]

TechCrunch COO Ned Desmond announced it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2015; Jager McConnellJager McConnellJager McConnell is an American technology executive who spent 11 years at Salesforce and has been CEO of Crunchbase since its 2015 spinout from AOL/Verizon, leading its shift to subscriptions and an AI predictions platform.Open the full entry, who had spent 11 years at Salesforce, became CEO and Matt Kaufman stayed on as president.⁠[11]

In February 2016 CrunchBase closed a $2 million Series A2 from investors including Salesforce VenturesSalesforce VenturesSalesforce Ventures is Salesforce’s corporate venture capital arm. Active since 2009, it backs companies from seed through growth across enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, data, security and AI. Salesforce supplies all of its capital.Open the full entry, Felicis Ventures and Cowboy Ventures, and launched data-access plans at $999 and $4,999 a month with separate commercial and non-commercial licenses.⁠[12]

In September 2016 CrunchBase Pro launched at $29 a month with advanced search, trend analytics and custom lists; the database exceeded 500,000 companies.⁠[13]

In April 2017 Crunchbase raised an $18 million Series B led by Mayfield and launched a $99-a-month enterprise product for teams.⁠[14]

In February 2018 Crunchbase launched Crunchbase Marketplace, letting users subscribe to data feeds from partners such as SimilarWeb and BuiltWith, with paid feeds at $49 per user a month; the site had close to 40 million unique visitors in the previous year.⁠[15]

In October 2019 Crunchbase raised a $30 million Series C led by OMERS Ventures; about 55 million people visited each year, staff had tripled since 2017 to 120, annual revenue run rate had grown tenfold, and the company decided to wind down site advertising.⁠[16]

In March 2020 Crunchbase moved to remote work because of COVID-19 and later declared itself “remote-first,” with employees able to live in 18 U.S. states.⁠[17]

In July 2022 Crunchbase raised a $50 million Series D led by Alignment Growth, bringing total funding to $106.5 million; it had 220 employees and more than 60,000 paying customers, and added $9 million in net new ARR on $2 million of burn in the first half.⁠[18]

In June 2023 Crunchbase began tracking venture funding to LGBTQ+ founders, who must self-identify and opt in; Diversity Spotlight, launched in 2020, then had 20 tags.⁠[19]

In mid-2023 the company carried out layoffs with a month’s notice; by June 2025 it had 160 employees.⁠[20]

In June 2024 Diversity Spotlight expanded to the U.K. and Europe; more than 70,000 U.S. companies had added a diversity tag to their profiles.⁠[21]

In February 2025 Crunchbase relaunched as an AI predictions platform, saying internal backtests showed 95% precision and 99% recall for funding predictions, with over 80 million users.⁠[22]

On December 2, 2025, the company said more than 5,000 predictions had been confirmed by real-world events by that fall.⁠[23]

On December 8 its Fundamentals, Insights and Predictions API packages became available in Fusion by J.P. Morgan.⁠[24]

In January 2026 Crunchbase confirmed that a threat actor had exfiltrated documents from its corporate network, saying business was not disrupted and federal law enforcement had been contacted; the group ShinyHunters claimed to have taken more than 2 million records with personal information, a figure that is the attackers’ claim.⁠[25]

In June 2026 Crunchbase launched Market Insights covering more than 5,100 micro-industries, saying annual contract value for its predictive products grew 900% year over year in the first quarter of 2026.⁠[26]

In July 2026 Crunchbase launched a Model Context Protocol (MCP) service that connects to AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Cursor.⁠[27]

In September 2026 Crunchbase’s private-company data became available in ChatGPT for Financial Services, with financial institutions buying access through OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry.⁠[28]

In October 2026 Crunchbase announced in San Francisco a private-market intelligence layer for AI agents and large language models.⁠[29]

Crunchbase: Official website: https://www.crunchbase.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[30]

X: Official account: https://x.com/crunchbase (opens in a new window)⁠[31]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Official account: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crunchbase/ (opens in a new window)⁠[31]

TechCrunch: Official website: https://techcrunch.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[31]