Methodology

Where raises come from

Two detector families run daily. United States: SEC EDGAR Form D filings, the public record every Regulation D offering files with the regulator. We keep only operating companies with money actually sold: pooled investment funds, real estate vehicles, and empty filings are dropped. Press: funding announcements from startup news feeds and news search, parsed for company, round, and amount. A raise carries its source on the record, and filings are linked to the original document on sec.gov.

This is a list of raises we can verify, not a census of all venture activity. Quiet rounds that never file or announce are invisible to everyone, including us. Coverage is strongest for the United States and Europe. Form D amounts are what the company reported as sold, which can lag or understate the full round; press amounts are as reported, and currency conversions are approximate.

How the rank works

Companies stay on the index for 90 days after their latest detected raise. The rank blends three signals: how recent the raise is (45 percent), how large it is (35 percent), and web traction, measured by presence in the Tranco traffic ranking, for the minority of freshly funded companies that already register there (20 percent). A two month old seed startup rarely has meaningful web traffic; pretending otherwise would be fake precision, so recency and size carry the rank.

What we will never collect

Company-level facts only. We never extract, store, or sell personal data: no founder names as data fields, no personal emails, no officer or director information from filings, even though it is technically present there. Investor names appear only when they are firms. Contact routes, where provided in paid tiers, are the company's own public form, role inboxes, and public social handles.

Corrections

Wrong amount, wrong company, a parse that mangled a headline, or a company that wants a record corrected: use the corrections form and we fix it in the next daily run.

Attribution

SEC EDGAR data is public domain. Traffic signals build on the Tranco list, a research project of KU Leuven and collaborators, available at tranco-list.eu.