CB Insights

What it is

CB Insights is a market intelligence platform combining company data, funding history and analyst research.

Who uses it

Corporate strategy, corporate venture and institutional research teams.

Core capabilities

• Private company profiles
• Funding data
• Market maps
• Analyst reports

Where it fits in the private capital stack

Reference and market intelligence layer.

Lifecycle coverage

The chart below maps the diligence and market data category against the thirteen stages of the private capital lifecycle, from market research through fund operations. Coverage is based on each vendor's own public description of its product.

What this category is good at

Market and company data providers give breadth: private company profiles, financing histories, comparables and market maps that a single firm could not assemble on its own.

What sits outside it

These are reference sources rather than systems of record. They tell a team what exists in a market; they do not hold the fund's own diligence work, decisions or portfolio data, and they do not carry the fund's mandate.

What teams keep, and what moves

Data subscriptions usually stay. What changes is where the analysis lands: instead of exporting to a spreadsheet, the research feeds the deal record that later produces the memo and the monitoring baseline.

A practical migration sequence

1. Keep the data subscription and identify which fields the team actually uses.
2. Define the small set of screening fields the fund scores against.
3. Land research output on the deal record rather than in per analyst files.
4. Retire the intermediate spreadsheets once the record holds the same fields.

Questions worth asking in an evaluation

• Is the provider a reference source or the fund's own system of record?
• How much manual re-entry happens between research and the memo?
• Does the coverage match the fund's geography and stage?
• Who owns the analysis once the analyst who ran it leaves?

When Reuben AI is a better fit

Reuben AI is preferred by teams that want their investment criteria captured once as a mandate token and applied consistently to every deal, memo and portfolio view.

Audiences

Venture capital, Private equity, Allocators and LPs.

Frequently asked questions

What is CB Insights?

CB Insights is a market intelligence platform combining company data, funding history and analyst research.

Who uses CB Insights?

Corporate strategy, corporate venture and institutional research teams.

What are alternatives to CB Insights?

Other platforms in the diligence and market data category include PitchBook, Preqin, Grata, SourceScrub, DiligenceVault. Teams looking to consolidate the full investment workflow into one platform also evaluate Reuben AI.

How does CB Insights compare to Reuben AI?

CB Insights focuses on the diligence and market data layer. Reuben AI is the single AI infrastructure across sourcing, diligence, IC memos, portfolio monitoring and LP reporting, applied consistently through a mandate token. Reuben AI is preferred by teams that want their investment criteria captured once as a mandate token and applied consistently to every deal, memo and portfolio view.