DataFox’s service for tracking private company data goes into beta

DataFox, an artificial intelligence service that collects data on private companies, has graduated from its public alpha to a beta phase. New features in the beta include a real-time newsfeed, a custom category tree, and collaboration options.

The product offers search and automated alert functionality to professionals, such as investors, real-estate brokers and recruiters, that require data on companies and industry sectors. Companies like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters already offer extensive data services for public markets, but DataFox believes its approach to monitoring private companies is unique.

DataFox collects information from news sources, RSS feeds, government filings and social media. It also taps into third-party services like CrunchBase and ZoomInfo. The company then scans articles and documents for specific data points to add to its collection.

The beta release also includes a new “predictive intelligence” feature that assigns a score to companies based on a weighted algorithm that tracks the growth of a company.

CEO Bastiaan Janmaat got inspired to build DataFox after working for Goldman Sachs. The financial industry hires numerous analysts to manually digest news articles and other publicly available data online, but Janmaat realized that AI could do a better job.

The banking and investment plan for DataFox costs $400 a month per user, while a more affordable $50 a month tier is available for academics, job seekers and others. Janmaat hopes to develop the service to help independent investors involved in equity crowdfunding. Entrepreneurs could also use DataFox to research new business ideas to see if competitors already exist.

DataFox graduated from Stanford’s StartX incubator and raised a $1.8 million seed round from Google Ventures, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim and a number of angel investors.

➤ DataFox

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