Startup Funding & Investor Intel

TL;DR for VC/PE deal sourcing, B2B sales, and recruiters: A Crunchbase-style funding feed rebuilt from PRIMARY sources - SEC Form D filings (the Regulation D exempt-offering notice almost every priced VC round files), EDGAR full-text search, and press coverage - not a Crunchbase scrape. Pull every fresh Form D in the last two weeks, look up a specific company's raise history, or map the companies a person sits on the board of. Each round comes parsed: issuer, offering amount, industry, the disclosed officers/directors/promoters, and any matching news story. Crunchbase killed its free API in 2025; this rebuilds its inputs from public, government-source data. Logged-out, public-data only. Free Apify plan covers exploration runs on your $5 platform credit.

Run it in 30 seconds

# Via the Apify Python SDK
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("seibs.co/startup-funding-intel").call(run_input={
    "mode": "recent_rounds",
    "lookback_days": 14,
    "industry_groups": ["Technology"],
    "states": ["CA", "NY"],
    "user_agent_contact": "you@company.com"
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Or via curl:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/seibs.co~startup-funding-intel/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode": "recent_rounds", "lookback_days": 14, "user_agent_contact": "you@company.com"}'

Or click "Try for free" on this page if you prefer the no-code UI. You must set a real user_agent_contact email - the SEC requires it.

What you get

Each run produces:

• A clean dataset, filterable in the Apify console and downloadable as CSV or JSON
• An OUTPUT.html dashboard preview of your top records
• A sample-output preview at ./.actor/sample-output.json

Three record types:

• funding_round_record - one parsed Form D filing (issuer, offering amount, industry, exemptions, related persons, press)
• company_record - a per-issuer rollup (total disclosed raised, round count, latest round)
• investor_graph_enrichment - one searched person mapped to the companies they are a related person on, with co-investors

Live example output

Sample shapes are in ./.actor/sample-output.json (the same records demo mode pushes when inputs are missing). A live recent_rounds run over the last 14 days returns the newest Form D filings parsed into the schema above, one funding_round_record per filing and one company_record per distinct issuer, with press mentions attached where a recent news story matches the issuer name.

What does Startup Funding Intel do?

It treats SEC Form D as the primary-source funding feed it effectively is. When a startup closes a priced equity round under Regulation D, it files a Form D within 15 days disclosing the issuer, the offering amount (total / sold / remaining), the industry, the securities type, and the related persons (executive officers, directors, promoters). This actor:

1. Finds the filings - either all of them in a lookback window (recent_rounds), or the ones matching a company or person name via EDGAR full-text search.
2. Parses each primary_doc.xml defensively into a clean record - handling the real-world quirks (offering amounts reported as "Indefinite", first sales "yet to occur", multi-relationship people).
3. Corroborates with press - a Google News RSS lookup, fuzzy-matched to the issuer name, attaches recent funding stories. Press files before Form D, so a fresh mention confirms the round is real and recent.
4. Resolves entities with rapidfuzz so "Acme Robotics, Inc." in a filing, "Acme Robotics" in a headline, and the EDGAR display name link up - and weak matches are flagged with a match_confidence field rather than silently merged.

Responsible use / data scope

This actor is a public-data tool built on government open data. SEC EDGAR is public-by-law with no adverse platform owner - the safest class of source. It reads only logged-out, publicly-served endpoints (EDGAR full-text search, the EDGAR archives, Google News RSS) - no accounts, no cookies, no paywalls. It minimizes PII: it surfaces the issuer's disclosed related persons (a public-record field that the filer chose to put on a federal form) and firmographics; it never enriches into private contact data or resells personal contact lists. You are responsible for lawful use of the outputs (GDPR / CCPA apply to personal data even when public). This is the synthesis path - we rebuild Crunchbase's inputs from primary sources, we do not scrape Crunchbase.

AI / RAG / Agent

A turn-key funding feed for deal-sourcing AI, sales copilots, and recruiting bots. Records arrive pre-parsed with total_offering_amount_usd, industry_group, filing_date, related_persons, and press_mentions, so an agent can answer "which California tech companies filed a Form D over $10M this week, and which have press confirming a Series B?" without parsing XML. Compatible with LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, and any MCP-aware agent runtime (a sibling mcp-startup-funding-intel actor is planned for direct tool-call wiring with agentic payments).

Features

• Four modes - recent-rounds firehose, per-company history, investor graph, and a scheduled watchlist monitor.
• Defensive Form D parser - offering amounts (total / sold / remaining, with non-numeric "Indefinite" preserved), industry group, federal exemptions, date of first sale, issuer (name / CIK / state / incorporation year), entity type, related persons with normalized relationships, minimum investment, revenue range.
• Press corroboration - up to 5 recent (180-day) news mentions per company from Google News RSS, fuzzy-matched to the issuer name. Soft-fail (press errors never abort the run).
• Entity resolution - rapidfuzz token_set_ratio with documented accept / weak / reject thresholds; weak matches carry a match_confidence caveat.
• Investor graph - companies a person is a related person on, co-investors seen on the same filings, total disclosed amounts, date range.
• SEC fair-access compliant - required contact email in the User-Agent, <= 8 req/s throttle, retry/backoff on 429/503, and a browse-edgar fallback when full-text search is unavailable.
• Honest framing - every round carries a data_lag_note; the investor graph carries a graph_note explaining Form D does not name LP/VC funds.
• Cost-control - per-run budget guard + demo-mode soft-fail so runs finish SUCCEEDED.

Use cases

• VC / PE deal sourcing - a fresh Form D is an early signal of a closing round. Watch recent_rounds filtered to your thesis (industry + state + minimum amount).
• B2B sales triggers - a fresh raise = budget. Route newly-funded companies to the AE who owns the territory. Pairs with the b2b-sales-triggers actor.
• Recruiting - newly-funded scale-ups are hiring; combine with hiring-signal-intel for the open-roles side.
• Investor relationship mapping - investor_search shows which companies a person is a disclosed director/officer on and who they file alongside.
• Watchlist monitoring - funding_monitor on a schedule alerts you when a target company files a new round.

Modes

Mode	What it returns
recent_rounds	Every Form D / D/A filing in a lookback window (default 14 days), optionally filtered by industry group, state, and minimum offering amount. One funding_round_record per filing; one company_record per distinct issuer.
company_funding	For each named company: its Form D history (resolved by name via EDGAR full-text search + fuzzy matching) plus press corroboration. Emits rounds + a company rollup.
investor_search	For each named person: the Form D filings where they appear as a related person, rolled up into an investor_graph_enrichment (companies backed, co-investors, totals, date range).
funding_monitor	A company watchlist intended for Apify Schedules. Monitor-mode delta digest of NEW rounds since the last run.

Input

See ./.actor/input_schema.json for the full form. Key fields:

{
    "mode": "recent_rounds",
    "user_agent_contact": "you@company.com",
    "lookback_days": 14,
    "industry_groups": ["Technology", "Biotechnology"],
    "states": ["CA", "NY", "MA"],
    "min_offering_amount_usd": 1000000,
    "include_press": true
}

For company_funding / funding_monitor, set companies (e.g. ["Acme Robotics", "Northwind AI"]). For investor_search, set investors (e.g. ["Jane Smith"]). The user_agent_contact email is required by the SEC and is intentionally not prefilled - a missing or placeholder value runs in demo mode instead of sending a fake identity to the SEC.

Output

One company_record per issuer (the headline rollup) followed by the funding_round_record rows, then any investor_graph_enrichment records.

{
    "record_type": "funding_round_record",
    "issuer_name": "Northwind AI, Inc.",
    "issuer_state": "CA",
    "form_type": "D",
    "is_amendment": false,
    "filing_date": "2026-05-22",
    "date_of_first_sale": "2026-05-15",
    "total_offering_amount_usd": 40000000.0,
    "amount_sold_usd": 40000000.0,
    "industry_group": "Technology",
    "federal_exemptions": ["06b", "3C"],
    "related_persons": [
        {"name": "Maria Delgado", "relationship": "Executive Officer"},
        {"name": "Priya Raman", "relationship": "Director"}
    ],
    "press_mentions": [
        {"title": "Northwind AI raises $40M Series B led by Meridian Ventures", "source": "TechCrunch", "match_confidence": 97.0}
    ],
    "edgar_filing_url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1999001/.../...-index.htm",
    "data_lag_note": "Form D often files days-to-weeks after the press announcement..."
}

Filings that cannot be resolved or fetched still emit a fetch_error record with a human reason for a complete audit trail.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

Event	Price	When charged
company_record	$0.006	Per per-issuer rollup (total disclosed raised, round count, latest round).
funding_round_record	$0.010	Per parsed Form D filing returned (the base unit).
investor_graph_enrichment	$0.012	Per searched person rolled up into an investor graph.
scheduled_delta_run	$0.050	Once per scheduled monitor-mode run.

A run that returns nothing costs nothing. A typical recent_rounds run over 14 days that returns ~80 filings across ~60 issuers costs roughly $0.80 (rounds) + $0.36 (companies) = about $1.16. Narrow the lookback, industry, state, or minimum-amount filters to control volume.

FAQ

Q: Why is a round missing? A: Only Regulation D exempt offerings file Form D. Priced VC equity rounds (Series Seed/A/B...) almost always do, because they rely on the Rule 506(b)/506(c) exemption - so most venture rounds show up. But a round done under a different exemption (for example certain Reg A+ or Reg CF crowdfunding raises, or a fully registered offering) may not file a Form D, and so will not appear here. There is also a filing lag: the issuer has up to 15 days after the first sale to file, and amendments (D/A) follow later - so a round announced in the press today may not file for a week or two. That lag is exactly why this actor attaches press corroboration and stamps every record with a data_lag_note.

Q: Is this Crunchbase data? A: No. This is the synthesis path - it rebuilds the inputs Crunchbase aggregates from public, government-source primary data (SEC Form D filings) plus public press, and never scrapes Crunchbase. Crunchbase killed its free API in 2025; rather than pay or scrape it, this actor goes to the source the filings come from. The trade-off is honest: Form D gives you the issuer, the offering size, the industry, the exemptions, and the disclosed officers/directors - but it does not name the venture funds or label the round "Series B" (the press mentions help fill that gap). It is a primary-source funding feed, not a re-sold commercial database.

Q: What does match_confidence mean? A: Linking the same company or person across SEC filings and news headlines is fuzzy - "Acme Robotics, Inc.", "Acme Robotics", and a padded headline like "Acme Robotics raises $40M" are the same entity, but a naive comparison would miss it. The actor uses rapidfuzz token_set_ratio (0-100) after normalizing the names (uppercasing, stripping punctuation and legal suffixes like Inc/LLC/Corp). A score of 90+ is accepted as a confident match with no caveat. A score of 75-89 is a weak match: the record is still returned, but it carries a match_confidence object with the score and a "verify before relying on it" note, so you decide rather than the actor silently merging two entities. Below 75 is treated as a different entity. Press headline matching uses a slightly lower floor plus a required funding-keyword filter to cut noise.

Q: Do I have to provide a contact email? A: Yes. The SEC fair-access policy requires every automated request to identify itself with a real contact email or the IP gets banned. The actor sends it in the User-Agent header. It is intentionally not prefilled, because a placeholder would send a fake identity to the SEC - so a missing or example.com value runs in demo mode instead.

Q: Can I schedule this? A: Yes. funding_monitor (or any mode under an Apify Schedule) gives you a hands-off feed. Pair it with monitor mode (below) so you only get the delta of new rounds. A daily recent_rounds over your thesis, or a weekly funding_monitor over a target-company watchlist, are the two common setups.

Save your input as an Apify Task

Apify Tasks let you save a configured input once and re-run it with one click - the foundation for schedules and monitor mode.

1. Click Run with your input configured (mode, contact email, filters).
2. Click Save as task.
3. Name it (e.g. seed-stage CA tech - daily).
4. Reload the task page and click Start anytime.

Run this on a schedule with Apify Schedules

1. Save your input as a Task (above).
2. Go to https://console.apify.com/schedules and Create new schedule.
3. Pick your Task and set a cron expression (daily 8am: 0 8 * * *; weekly Mondays 9am: 0 9 * * 1).
4. Save. Each run surfaces the newest filings for your thesis or watchlist.

Monitor mode

When this actor runs under an Apify Schedule, or in funding_monitor mode, it emits a change digest of new rounds since the last run instead of repeating the full set, with a digest record at the top. Provide monitor_webhook_url and the digest also fires to your Slack channel. Cost: one scheduled_delta_run event ($0.05) per scheduled run plus standard PPE on the emitted records.

Related Actors

• sec-edgar-intel - the broader SEC actor (8-K triggers, Form 4 insider trades, 13F positions, full-text search). This actor specializes its Form D leg into a funding feed.
• b2b-sales-triggers - turn a fresh raise into an outbound sales trigger for your AE/SDR team.
• hiring-signal-intel - pair a raise with a hiring surge for a full "this company is scaling" picture.

Support

Open an issue via the Apify Store contact link. Include the run ID and input config so the issue is reproducible.

Changelog

See ./CHANGELOG.md.

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