CompanyCurrent

Sources and methodology

Where CompanyCurrent’s facts come from, how each one is labelled, and how findings are checked. Every fact in the product is dated and links to its source, so you can verify it yourself.

1. Public sources and licences

  • Business listings: place records from the Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA-Permissive-2.0) for every US state and Canadian province (release 2026-10-21, about 13.8 million listings). Phones and websites are shown as listed, labelled “listed, not verified”.
  • Business licences: City of Vancouver business licences (Open Government Licence – Vancouver).
  • Government contract awards: US federal awards from USAspending.gov and contract records from FPDS (public domain), and Government of Canada contracts from open.canada.ca (Open Government Licence – Canada).
  • Building and trade permits: open-data permit records naming the contractor or applicant, from Austin, Baton Rouge, Boston, Calgary, Cambridge (MA), Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Edmonton, Everett, Kansas City, Marin County, New Orleans, New York, Norfolk, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Rockford, San Diego County, San Jose, Seattle, Somerville, Toronto and Winnipeg, each under its portal’s licence. A permit shows a company was named on a record; it is not a statement about the company’s plans.
  • Company filings: Form 8-K filings by US public companies on SEC EDGAR (public domain).
  • Legal-entity records: GLEIF (CC0).
  • Company websites and news: announcements on a company’s own website, news indexed by GDELT, and openings on its own job board. Postings are openings, not confirmed hires. Short excerpts are shown with a link; copyright stays with the publisher.

2. Known, inferred and unknown

KNOWN
Stated by a source we link to, such as the company’s own website or a public record.
INFERRED
Reasoned from sources, and labelled as such. For example, a size band estimated from a company’s website, or a headline in a third-party news index.
UNKNOWN
We couldn’t find it, so we say so instead of inventing a value.

3. How findings are checked

  • Identity checked. Before we attribute a development to a company, we check it against the company’s own website. When we can’t, the record says “website not verified”.
  • Every fact dated and linked. Each development shows when it happened, when we saw it, and a link to the page it came from.
  • Developments may be absent. A development is shown only when it is dated and verified against its source. Most companies have none on record; they are still listed on how well they fit.
  • Support check. Each development is matched against its source page text. This is support checking, not proof; review sources before relying on them.
  • Facts and suggestions kept apart. What a source says is shown separately from our suggestion of why it might matter to you.
  • Conflicts are shown, not hidden. When sources disagree, the finding is marked so you can see both.

4. What we never claim

  • That a company will buy, or a prediction that it intends to. A change at a company is a reason to start a conversation, not proof it will buy.
  • That a job posting means someone was hired.
  • Anything we can’t link to a source.
  • Personal email addresses or phone numbers. We never guess an email address, and we don’t sell contact data. A person (an owner or founder) is named only when the company’s own website states it; the sentence and the page are shown with the date we read it.

5. Coverage

Business listings cover every US state and Canadian province, plus Vancouver business licences. Recent, dated events are rare: in our measurements, about 3 in 100 of the best-matching ordinary companies had one. The list says how many of the companies shown have one. Coverage depends on what each source publishes; when we find no recent development, we say “no recent development found”.

6. When a Deep Dive credit is used

Discovery, filtering, previews, saving and monitoring are free. Deep research uses a credit only after you authorize it, and only when it finds a dated, sourced development from the past year, or at least three facts relevant to what you sell from the company’s own website or its job postings; otherwise the credit is returned. Reopening reports is free.

Questions about a source or a finding: hello@companycurrent.com.