What BrightQuery does

BrightQuery is an Irvine, California-based data platform company, founded in 2019 by economist Jose M. Plehn, Ph.D., that aggregates and standardizes business information from 100,000+ federal, state, and local government agencies to deliver verified firmographic, financial, legal, location, and people data on 274M+ global organizations across 222 countries. Its technology foundation is the Five Pillars of the Economy framework, which links Organizations, Legal Entities, People, Locations, and Addresses through shared identifiers including EIN, LEI, CIK, and a proprietary bq_id, forming a unified entity graph that exposes data through RESTful APIs (Business Identity and Extraction endpoints), bulk flat-file feeds in CSV, Parquet, and JSON, and a set of self-serve SaaS tools (BQ Terminal for due diligence, BQ Prospector for lead generation, BQ Locator for territory mapping).

The company sells to four primary buyer segments — banking and fintech, insurance and insurtech, private equity/venture capital and investment banking, and B2B sales and marketing — addressing pain points in KYB/KYC compliance, private-company underwriting, deal sourcing, and account-based targeting. Revenue is generated through subscription SaaS, recurring or usage-based API access, and one-time or multi-year bulk data licenses; pricing is quote-based across all tiers, with a 7-day free trial on the API. BrightQuery also operates a free reference graph at OpenData.org and runs federally funded work as the lead data partner for the National Secure Data Service, with five active federal projects. In 2023 it launched BQ AI, introducing an open-source Government Data Agent (built on IBM Data Prep Kit and Meta Llama Stack) and conversational AI tools for querying federal statistical datasets.

The customer base spans enterprise anchors (notably FactSet, where BrightQuery is the sole provider of private market intelligence) and SMB customers (e.g., LeadGen, Kuber Financial) using the data for direct-dial and direct-mail campaigns, with reported outcomes of a 4% referral rate to loan brokers (vs. an industry 1%) and a 40% lift in direct-mail response when targeting identified business owners. Distribution is API-first, complemented by bulk feeds, SaaS products, and economic reports (ProSight, NFIB). Strategic positioning centers on partnerships with FINOS (Gold Member, Governing Board), the Overture Maps Foundation, the AI Alliance (Executive Board), the Linux Foundation, EDM Council, Data Foundation, Computing Research Association, Agentic AI Foundation, and NIEM, alongside five federally funded NSDS projects.

Name

BrightQuery

Legal name

BrightQuery

Website

https://brightquery.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2019

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

BrightQuery aggregates business data from 100,000+ government agencies into a unified Five Pillars entity graph covering 274M+ organizations across 222 countries, delivered via APIs, bulk feeds, and SaaS tools to banks, insurers, PE/VC firms, and B2B sales and marketing teams.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Business Data and Intelligence Platform

NAICS

Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Marketing Database & Contact Data Providers (B2B/B2C Lists) (BPAFAKAF)

akta.pro secondary industry

Data Extraction & Structuring (Invoices, POs, Receipts, KYC) (BPAAAKAF)

Keywords

• Business data api
• Private company data
• Firmographic intelligence
• KYB compliance data
• Entity resolution platform

Headquarters

HQ city

Irvine

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. SaaS Subscriptions (BQ Terminal, BQ Prospector, BQ Locator): Interactive web-based platforms providing real-time search, corporate family tree visualization, detailed financials, risk and compliance indicators, lead generation, and mapping/location tools. Delivered as subscription-based SaaS with monthly/annual billing.
2. RESTful API Access: Real-time programmatic access to firmographics, financials, legal entities, locations, and employment data. Offered with usage-based or subscription pricing, enabling automated KYB screening, CRM enrichment, AI/ML pipelines, and production workflow integrations.
3. Bulk Data Feeds: Enterprise flat files with 6,000+ fields delivered in CSV, Parquet, and JSON formats, updated monthly. One-time license or recurring subscription model for large-scale data integration.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels6 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

BrightQuery aggregates, standardizes, and continuously updates government-sourced business data from 100,000+ federal, state, and local agencies (IRS, DOL, SEC, SBA, USPS, Secretary of State) into a unified Five Pillars entity framework covering 274 million organizations, 226 million legal entities, and 1.2 billion people across 222 countries. The company delivers this data through SaaS products (BQ Terminal, BQ Prospector, BQ Locator), RESTful APIs, bulk flat-file feeds, and economic reports for compliance, credit risk, capital markets, and sales/marketing use cases.

Product overview

BrightQuery offers a platform-plus-modules architecture organized around its Five Pillars of the Economy framework (Organizations, Legal Entities, People, Locations, Addresses). The core portfolio consists of four delivery modes: (1) BQ Data Products (Bulk Data Feeds) - enterprise flat-file datasets in CSV, Parquet, and JSON with monthly updates; (2) SaaS Products - BQ Terminal (interactive web platform for due diligence), BQ Prospector (AI-powered lead generation and ABM tool), and BQ Locator (geospatial mapping tool); (3) BQ API Suite - RESTful Business Identity API and Extraction API for real-time enrichment across financials, executives, firmographics, legal entities, and locations; and (4) Economic Reports - BQ-PROSIGHT Small Business Report, BQ-PROSIGHT Business Data Feed, and NFIB-BQ SMB Report. These products share a unified BQ Entity Graph data foundation and are augmented by government AI tools (Government AI Explorer, Government AI Chatbot, Government Data Agent) and the free OpenData.org reference graph.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• BQ Data Products (Bulk Data Feeds) Enterprise-grade bulk data feeds delivering structured firmographic, financial, legal entity, executive, location, and address data across the full BrightQuery universe. Formats: CSV, Parquet, and JSON. Updated monthly. Covers Company Firmographics, Financials & Employment, Corporate Family Tree & Legal Entities, Directors & Officers, Organization Executives, Organization Contacts, Organization Locations, Delaware Stock Entities, Franchise Universe, Healthcare Entities, and Address Universe datasets.
• BQ Terminal Interactive web-based platform for analysts, compliance teams, and investment professionals providing real-time search, corporate family tree visualization, detailed financials, and risk and compliance indicators. Offers a 360-degree company view with firmographics, financials, ownership, executives, and locations unified in one screen for due diligence workflows. 7-day free trial available.
• BQ Prospector AI-powered lead generation and data enrichment tool for sales, marketing, and investment teams. Enables filtering by revenue, employment, growth, credit metrics, financial performance, NAICS/SIC industry, geography, size, age, and ownership structure. Provides verified executive contacts with LinkedIn URLs and professional email addresses, exportable as CRM-ready lists in CSV, Excel, and JSON formats.
• BQ Locator Geospatial business intelligence tool enabling users to map, filter, and analyze business locations across industries and geographies. Supports search by address, ZIP, radius, city, or custom geography with latitude/longitude coordinates. Combines location filters with revenue, employment, industry, and growth metrics for hyper-targeted territory planning and market expansion analysis.
• BQ API Suite (Business Identity API + Extraction API) RESTful API suite for real-time programmatic access to BrightQuery data. The Business Identity API (Search - POST) returns firmographic, legal entity, and location data; the Extraction API (GET) retrieves structured enriched data across financials, executives, geography, ownership, and lineage. Supports search by company name, address, website URL, ticker, CIK, LinkedIn URL, email, or BQ ID. Returns up to 10 records per request with monthly data refresh and 7-day free trial.
• BQ-PROSIGHT Small Business Report Interactive online dashboard providing real-time filtering to track the local small business economy at the industry level. Delivers factual, up-to-date market intelligence on small businesses in markets of interest, driven by BQ's sole-sourced historical and current financials, employment and payroll data for public and private companies from validated government filings.
• BQ-PROSIGHT Business Data Feed Continuous economic data stream enabling financial services organizations to append verified audited firmographics (NAICS and revenue) to existing small business client records. Addresses the common gap where 60-70% of small business client records are missing NAICS and revenue data. Supports lead generation with verified contact information.
• NFIB-BQ SMB Report Collaborative report with the National Federation of Independent Business providing critical data statistics on all small businesses organized by sector and geography. Includes aggregated employment, payroll, and net income statistics broken down by employment size, congressional district, state, and industry sector over time. Supports NFIB's advocacy work on legislation, taxes, and economic guidance.
• KYB Append API Real-time API service that appends verified firmographic, financial, legal, and contact data to a record using flexible search inputs. Supports KYB (Know Your Business), KYC (Know Your Customer), credit scoring, and business identity resolution use cases. Enables automated screening with OFAC flags, Secretary of State registration status, UBO mapping, and legal control layers.
• Government AI Explorer Template-based Q&A system grounded in Google DataCommons (gov.brightquery.ai) enabling any user to query official federal data in plain language without SQL. Predictable, auditable, and agency-controlled. Supports multi-agency queries across NCSES, BEA, and BTS.
• Government AI Chatbot Conversational RAG system (ncses.brightquery.ai) with real-time agency website retrieval, multi-turn memory, and AI-generated charts and tables. Supports multi-agency agentic queries autonomously integrating datasets from NCSES, BEA, and BTS in a single interaction.
• Government Data Agent (GDA) Open-source platform for transforming statistical agency data into structured, AI-ingestible formats. Built on IBM Data Prep Kit, Meta Llama Stack, and BQ's Orchestration Kit. Converts agency outputs using triplification, Schema.org tagging, and Croissant metadata. Serves NCSES, BEA, Census, BLS, IRS SOI, BTS, NCHS, NASS, and FRED.
• OpenData.org Free global entity reference graph founded by BQ CEO Jose Plehn. Built on the same Five Pillars framework as BrightQuery, covering 324 million organizations, 512 million locations, and 1.2 billion individuals across 222 countries. Available in CSV and Senzing-ready JSON formats. Fully GDPR and CCPA compliant.

Quantifiable outcome

• 4% referral rate to loan brokers from direct dial campaigns vs. 1% industry average
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments7 records

Ideal customer profiles6 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability10 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered minor, core/flagship and core.

• Computing Research Association (CRA)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 2 April 2026BrightQuery joined CRA to advance open data standards, support AI-ready data infrastructure, and foster innovation across data science, AI, and computing systems.
• FINOS (Fintech Open Source Foundation)core/flagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 19 March 2026BrightQuery joined FINOS as a Gold Member and CEO Jose Plehn was elected to the FINOS Governing Board alongside BlackRock, Bank of America Securities, Google Cloud, Moody's, and S&P Global. BrightQuery contributes expertise in global business data to open-source projects aimed at data interoperability in the financial industry.
• Overture Maps FoundationcoreTechnology or Integration · 25 February 2026BrightQuery joined as a General Member, contributing 324M+ organizations and 512M+ locations to expand open places data coverage for global geospatial infrastructure.
• National Secure Data Service (NSDS)core/flagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024BrightQuery serves as the lead government data partner for the NSDS and a primary data supplier for federal AI initiatives. Provides data and analytics capabilities to agencies at no cost, supporting economic analysis, compliance, and operational efficiency. Currently working on five active federally funded projects including AIRD24, DAA24, ADEB24, DCS25, and DUP25.
• AI Alliancecore/flagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerExecutive Board Member of the AI Alliance, contributing to open, collaborative AI research infrastructure and standards development.
• Linux FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerSilver Member of the Linux Foundation, participating in open source ecosystem development and collaborative technology initiatives.
• EDM CouncilminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCorporate Member of the EDM Council, contributing to enterprise data management standards and best practices.
• Data FoundationminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerAssociate Member of the Data Foundation, supporting data infrastructure and governance initiatives.
• Agentic AI FoundationminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSilver Member of the Agentic AI Foundation, supporting open, interoperable agentic AI standards development.
• NIEMminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerGeneral Sponsor of NIEM (National Information Exchange Model), supporting law enforcement and public safety data sharing standards.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves8 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Emerging players

• SalesIntel: B2B contact and company data provider focused on data accuracy and human-verified contacts. Comparable to BrightQuery's emphasis on authoritative, verified B2B data for sales and marketing teams.
• Owler: Community-driven business data platform providing firmographics, revenue estimates, and competitive intelligence on private companies. Comparable as a source of private company intelligence with similar SMB and mid-market coverage.
• Enigma Technologies: Alternative data provider aggregating public and government-sourced records on businesses. Comparable as a competitor in authoritative, government-sourced business data with similar vertical breadth in financial services.

Direct peers

• Apollo.io: B2B sales intelligence platform providing contact, firmographic, and lead enrichment data. Comparable to BQ Prospector for sales and marketing teams building prospect lists and enriching CRM records.
• ZoomInfo: Leading B2B sales and marketing intelligence platform offering firmographic, contact, and intent data. Directly comparable to BQ Prospector and BQ Terminal in lead generation, CRM enrichment, and account-based marketing use cases.
• PitchBook: Private market data platform focused on PE, VC, and M&A deal intelligence. Comparable for PE/VC and investment banking customers using BrightQuery for deal sourcing, target screening, and due diligence on private companies.
• Dun & Bradstreet: Largest incumbent in global business data and credit intelligence, providing firmographics, financials, and risk data on millions of companies. Directly comparable as a primary source of business identity and financial data for KYB, credit, and B2B sales workflows.

Broad incumbents

• Moody's Analytics: Provides credit risk, regulatory, and financial data solutions including private company financial estimates and entity data. Comparable for credit and risk decisioning use cases BrightQuery serves via its Credit & Risk segment.
• S&P Global Market Intelligence: Major provider of financial data, analytics, and research for capital markets and corporate customers. Comparable for private market intelligence, PE/VC deal diligence, and financial institution workflows that BrightQuery supports.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions: Provides business, people, and public records data for compliance, risk, and identity verification. Comparable as a provider of KYB/AML data and corporate identity intelligence to financial institutions and insurance companies.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors1 record

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about BrightQuery