Company News Triggers: Funding, Layoffs, M&A and More

Company trigger alerts from open news, with rules you can read. Give this actor a list of companies and it returns dated buying-signal events from the GDELT Project's open 15-minute news files: acquisitions, funding rounds, layoffs, expansions, leadership changes, product launches, partnerships, lawsuits and regulatory actions, bankruptcies, security incidents and earnings. Each row cites the real article, says which rule fired and why the company matched. No AI guesses, no search engine scraping, no LinkedIn, no proxies, no API key.

USD 3 per 1,000 events. Companies with no news cost nothing; a run with no events costs only the start fee.

What people use it for

• Outreach timing for SDR and BD teams. Watch your target accounts daily and reach out the week they raise, expand, launch or hire a new executive.
• Account watch. Customers announcing layoffs, a new CFO, an acquisition or a security incident: know before the renewal call.
• Competitor watch. Launches, partnerships, lawsuits and acquisitions of the companies you compete with, in one daily feed.
• Layoff and expansion watch for recruiters and outplacement firms. New sites, plants, offices and hiring announcements, and the opposite.
• CRM enrichment. Push events to a sheet, Slack or your CRM with Apify integrations, keyed by company name and domain.

Sample output

Real rows from a run on 2026-10-06 (companies OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Walmart, Uber; 24 hours; English sources; 22 events, the same 22 on Apify in 32 seconds):

Published (UTC)	Company	Trigger	Confidence	Headline	Publisher
2026-10-06 17:30	OpenAI	funding	medium	OpenAI in talks with UAE funds, BlackRock for $30 billion funding round	business-standard.com
2026-10-06 14:51	Uber	acquisition, expansion	medium	Uber to Acquire EzCater for $2.3B, Expanding Catering Reach	businessinsider.com
2026-10-06 15:00	Microsoft	security-incident	high	Microsoft Exchange flaw allows hackers to read mailboxes across an organization, so patch now	techradar.com
2026-10-06 14:30	Nvidia	product-launch	high	Nvidia rolls out new Game Ready graphics driver for Call of Duty and more	kitguru.net
2026-10-05 21:19	Walmart	legal-regulatory	high	Frozen Berries Sold at Walmart and Trader Joe's Recalled Due to Potential E. Coli Contamination	aol.com

One full row (JSON), exactly as output:

{
  "id": "h1PN5e-s6YU-20261005231500-806",
  "company": "Walmart",
  "matchedName": "Walmart",
  "domain": null,
  "triggerTags": [
    "legal-regulatory"
  ],
  "primaryTrigger": "legal-regulatory",
  "confidence": "high",
  "matchedOn": [
    "headline",
    "organization"
  ],
  "matchedRule": "regulatory.1",
  "matchedRules": [
    "regulatory.1"
  ],
  "title": "Frozen Berries Sold at Walmart and Trader Joe's Recalled Due to Potential E. Coli Contamination",
  "url": "https://www.aol.com/articles/frozen-berries-sold-walmart-trader-211919000.html",
  "sourceDomain": "aol.com",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-05T21:19:00.000Z",
  "seenAt": "2026-10-05T23:15:00.000Z",
  "language": "en",
  "tone": -1.6,
  "themes": [
    "TAX_FNCACT_TRADER",
    "AFFECT",
    "TAX_DISEASE_OUTBREAK",
    "WB_635_PUBLIC_HEALTH",
    "WB_2165_HEALTH_EMERGENCIES",
    "WB_2166_HEALTH_EMERGENCY_PREPAREDNESS_AND_DISASTER_RESPONSE",
    "WB_621_HEALTH_NUTRITION_AND_POPULATION",
    "WB_2167_PANDEMICS",
    "EPU_CATS_HEALTHCARE",
    "WB_2024_ANTI_CORRUPTION_AUTHORITIES"
  ],
  "organizations": [
    "trader joe",
    "walmart",
    "publix"
  ],
  "matchedOrganizations": [
    "walmart"
  ],
  "countries": [
    "US",
    "PR"
  ],
  "alsoOnDomains": [],
  "rulesVersion": "2026-10-06.1",
  "source": "gdelt-gkg",
  "citation": "Contains data from the GDELT Project, https://www.gdeltproject.org/",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-06T20:18:44.399Z"
}

How it works

1. One scan for the whole list. GDELT publishes one Global Knowledge Graph file every 15 minutes with every article it processed (about 1,500 English-language articles per file). The actor downloads the files for your window (4 at a time, newest first) and checks every headline against one dictionary built from all your company names, so 500 companies cost about the same scan as 5. A 24-hour run reads 96 files (about 470 MB): 30 seconds on Apify in our test, 9 seconds from a fast home line.
2. Company match. A row is a candidate when a company name or alias appears as whole words in the headline, when GDELT's organization list for the article names the company, or when the article sits on the company's own domain.
3. Trigger rules. The headline is checked against the published rules below. Every rule has an id (acquisition.1, lawsuit.1...) that appears in matchedRule, so you can audit any row.
4. Role checks. For funding, expansion and product launches the company must be named before the trigger words (it is the one raising, opening or launching), and for funding not after "from", "by", "with", "backed", "led" or "including" (an investor in someone else's round is not reported as raising money). For leadership changes the company must be named before the appointment words, or right after "of" or "at" ("new CEO of X"). A company named as a source ("X says", "according to X", "in X report"), or as a person's past employer ("former X chief", "X veteran", "X alum"), is not the subject.
5. Confidence. high: the headline names the company and GDELT also tagged it as an organization. medium (the default minimum): the headline names the company, or the article is on the company's domain. low (only with Minimum confidence: Low): GDELT's organization list names the company but the headline does not, or only a GDELT theme code (ECON_BANKRUPTCY, WB_1277_BANKRUPTCY_AND_LIQUIDATION, CYBER_ATTACK) suggests the trigger.
6. Duplicates. The same URL is one event. The same headline on many sites is one event per company, keeping the earliest copy and naming the other publishers in alsoOnDomains. Different companies in one headline give one event each. Rows come out newest first; each row is charged once.

The rules, published

Rules version 2026-10-06.1. Words are matched as whole words in any case. Precision is the share of correct rows in a hand-checked sample: rows this actor output for a 430-company watch list (big tech, banks, retailers, automakers, airlines, pharma, telecoms, Canadian and Indian majors, AI startups) over the 72 hours of GDELT files to 2026-10-06 20:00 UTC. A row counts as correct only when the headline reports that kind of event with the watched company (or a named unit of it) as a party; an investor in someone else's round, a source, a venue or another company with the same name counts as wrong. Recall was not measured: headlines worded in other ways are missed. The labelled rows ship with the actor's tests, which fail if the rules drift from these numbers.

Trigger type	Main words (rule ids)	Measured precision
acquisition	acquires, to acquire, acquisition of, takeover, buyout, merger, merges, agrees to buy, deal to buy, bought by, snaps up (not "acquires N shares", "customer acquisition", shoppers who "snap up" a bargain) (acquisition.1)	20 of 20
expansion	expands presence, footprint, operations, production or capacity (expansion.1); expands into (.2); opens a new office, plant, factory, store, hub, data center, hotel and similar (.3); to build or plans a new site (.4); invests an amount in a new site or capacity (.5); breaks ground, enters the market, international or retail expansion, expansion plans (.6); to hire or create N jobs (.7)	20 of 20
product-launch	launches, unveils, introduces, debuts, rolls out or releases followed by a product word (app, platform, model, service, feature, chip, vehicle, flavors...) but not a probe, campaign, attack, budget or plan (product-launch.1); now available, hits shelves (.2)	19 of 20
partnership	partners with, partnership with, strategic or technology partnership, teams up with, joint venture, strategic alliance, collaborates with, joins forces, tie-up, signs a deal or agreement with, strikes a deal with (not diplomatic or bilateral partnerships) (partnership.1)	19 of 20
legal-regulatory	sues, sued, lawsuit, class action, litigation, injunction, patent infringement, settles a suit (lawsuit.1); regulator, antitrust, competition authority, FDA/SEC/FTC/FCA/CMA and others approve, fine, probe or block, recalls, consent decree, licence revoked, GDPR (regulatory.1); fined, hit with a fine or probe, faces or opens a probe or investigation, under investigation, indicted, pleads guilty, subpoena, penalty (legal.1)	19 of 20
layoffs	layoffs, lays off, laid off, job cuts, cuts N jobs, slashes jobs, redundancies, workforce reduction, downsizing, furloughs, voluntary separation (not "avoids furloughs", "no layoffs") (layoffs.1)	18 of 19 (all available)
leadership-change	appoints, names, hires, taps or promotes a CEO, CFO, CTO, chief officer, president, chair or managing director (leadership-change.1); a chief steps down, resigns, retires or is ousted (.2); new or interim CEO, takes the helm, succeeds as CEO (.3); not prime ministers or coaches	17 of 19
earnings (off by default)	earnings report, results, beat or miss; Q1 to Q4 results, profit or revenue; revenue rises or falls; beats or misses estimates; raises or cuts guidance; profit warning; trading update (earnings.1)	17 of 20
security-incident	data breach, hacked, hackers, cyberattack, ransomware attack, data leak, phishing attack, DDoS, zero-day, stolen data (security-incident.1)	13 of 19, weak: articles about breach rules and people who hack are tagged too
funding	raises, secures, lands or closes an amount (USD 5M, EUR 2bn, 25 million) for a round (funding.1); Series A to F, seed round, pre-seed, funding round, venture round, in new funding (funding.2); not PACs, campaigns, charity drives or raised outlooks, guidance, forecasts, revenue, estimates or dividends	weak or unproven: 2 of 4 company events (only 4 in 72 hours for this list); the headline rule alone was right on 15 of 20 headlines (misses: charity drives, a stock exchange's listings total)
bankruptcy	bankruptcy, Chapter 7, 11 or 15, insolvency, receivership, liquidation, creditor protection, CCAA, enters administration, administrators appointed, goes bust, files for bankruptcy (bankruptcy.1)	weak or unproven: 0 of 2 company events (only 2 in 72 hours for this list); the headline rule alone was right on 14 of 18 headlines (misses: a person's bankruptcy, an insolvency risk warning, legal commentary)

Honest notes on these numbers: samples are small and concentrated on a few big stories rewritten by many publishers (the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger, HDFC Bank's new CEO, an OpenAI data incident in Australia), so another week will differ. The same company-role errors can appear in any type: a headline that names your company next to someone else's event ("X Secures Major Nvidia GPU Contract for AI Expansion") is still tagged. Check matchedRule and the headline before acting on an event.

Company matching and how to avoid false matches

• Write names as people write them: Shopify, C.H. Robinson, AT&T, McDonald's. Accents, dots in initials, & versus and, possessives (Shopify's) and decimal numbers are normalised. Legal endings at the end of a name (Inc, Corp., Corporation, Ltd, LLC, PLC, GmbH, AG, SA, NV and others) are ignored, so Acme Corp. matches "Acme" and "Acme Corporation". Group words (Holdings, Group) are kept in your name but ignored in GDELT's organization names, so Rolls-Royce matches GDELT's "rolls royce holdings".
• A mention does not count when it is written all in lower case while your name has capitals ("snap up" is not Snap), when it follows a currency sign ("GBP 3m" is not 3M), when it is glued to another word by a hyphen ("Nvidia-backed", "ex-Microsoft"), or when it sits in a short " - Publisher" or " | Publisher" ending.
• Add other names on the same line: JPMorgan | JPMorgan Chase | JP Morgan.
• For names that are also common words, add + words: the headline (or GDELT's organization list) must contain one of them. Visa | +payments | +card | +cards | +mastercard.
• Add - words to drop headlines: Ford | -doug ford | -harrison ford.
• Add the company's domain (block.xyz) to output it and to count articles published on that domain.
• In Company details (JSON) you can also set matchCase: true (the headline must use your exact capitals) or requireOrganization: true (GDELT must also tag the company as an organization), the strongest guard for names like Block or Square.

Scheduling recipe: a daily trigger feed

1. Save your company list as a task with Only new events on, Look back 24 or 26 hours (the overlap catches late files) and the trigger types you care about.
2. Schedule it daily (or every few hours with a shorter look back).
3. Add an Apify integration: Slack, email, a webhook, Zapier or Make on "Run succeeded", or read the dataset from the API into a sheet or CRM.

The first run outputs current events (or nothing, with First run with Only new = None). Later runs output only events no earlier run output. The memory is kept per company list and settings in your own company-news-triggers-state key-value store for 14 days, so two tasks with different lists never hide each other's events.

Input example

{
  "companies": ["Shopify", "Stripe", "Visa | +payments | +card", "Ford Motor | Ford | -doug ford"],
  "companyDetails": [{ "name": "Block", "aliases": ["Block Inc", "Square", "Cash App"], "domain": "block.xyz", "requireOrganization": true }],
  "triggerTypes": ["funding", "acquisition", "layoffs", "leadership-change", "expansion"],
  "lookbackHours": 26,
  "onlyNew": true,
  "maxEventsPerCompany": 10,
  "maxResults": 500
}

Output fields

Field	Meaning
id	Company id plus GDELT record id.
company	The company as you wrote it.
matchedName	Which of its names matched (or the domain).
domain	The company domain you supplied, if any.
triggerTags	All trigger types the headline matched, most specific first.
primaryTrigger	The first of triggerTags.
confidence	high, medium or low (see How it works).
matchedOn	headline, organization and/or domain.
matchedRule, matchedRules	Rule id of the primary trigger, and of every tag in triggerTags.
title	The headline as published (HTML entities decoded, long dashes written as a hyphen).
url, sourceDomain	The publisher's article URL and domain.
publishedAt, seenAt	Publisher's timestamp when GDELT found one, else the GDELT file time; and the GDELT file time (UTC).
language, tone	Source language; GDELT's overall tone (about -10 to +10).
themes, organizations, countries	Top 10 GDELT theme codes, organization names and ISO country codes of the article.
matchedOrganizations	GDELT organization names that matched the company.
alsoOnDomains	Other publishers that ran the same headline.
rulesVersion, source, citation, fetchedAt	Rules version, gdelt-gkg, the GDELT credit line, and when this run wrote the row.

The run's SUMMARY record lists events per company (including companies with none) and per trigger type, files read, articles scanned, duplicates merged and what was charged.

Pricing

Pay per event:

Event	Price (FREE and BRONZE plans)
Run start	USD 0.002
Trigger event (one output row)	USD 0.003, so USD 3 per 1,000

SILVER plans pay 10% less per event and GOLD and above 20% less. Examples:

• The default input (5 companies, 24 hours) returned 22 events on 2026-10-06: about USD 0.07.
• 200 companies watched daily with Only new events, about 60 new events a week: about USD 0.78 a month for events plus USD 0.06 for 30 starts.
• Quiet companies cost nothing. Set Maximum cost per run in the run options to cap any run; the actor stops cleanly at that limit.

Personal data

GDELT's files also carry person names, quotations and page authors; this actor never reads those columns and has no field for a person. leadership-change only labels the article: the headline is the publisher's own text and may name the executive, exactly as published.

Attribution and data source

Contains data from the GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/). GDELT states that its datasets "are available for unlimited and unrestricted use for any academic, commercial, or governmental use of any kind without fee", with a citation and a link to its website when redistributing. Every row carries that citation in citation; please keep it when you republish the data.

Limits

• Headline rules miss events worded in other ways and mis-tag some; the precision above is measured, not guaranteed. GDELT's coverage is broad but not complete.
• Different headlines about the same story from different publishers are separate events (only identical headlines are merged). Maximum events per company keeps one big story from filling a run.
• English rules: non-English headlines rarely match. Translated sources arrive 1 to 3 hours late.
• Titles only: GDELT publishes no snippet and this actor does not fetch articles.
• 72 hours is the maximum window per run.

Polite fetching

Every request names this actor (Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; company-news-triggers/1.0; +https://apify.com/JTPalms)). GDELT files are static downloads from data.gdeltproject.org, at most 4 at a time, each downloaded once per run. No proxies, no browser automation, no article pages fetched.