BrightQuery (BQ) is a business data intelligence platform providing accurate, government-verified data on companies worldwide - from Fortune 500s to sole proprietors. Founded in 2019, BQ is headquartered in Irvine, California, with a mission to make the world more factual, one dataset at a time.

Unlike providers relying on self-reported data, scraped websites, or investor documents, BQ sources exclusively from official government filings - IRS, DOL, SEC, SBA, and 100,000+ federal, state, and local agencies. This means every record is authoritative and continuously verified, not crowdsourced or estimated.

BQ was founded by Jose M. Plehn, Ph.D. - an economist with deep roots in federal statistical agencies including the IRS, Census Bureau, and BLS. Jose holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and degrees in Economics, Mathematics, and Management Science from MIT.

BQ organizes all data around five interconnected entity types: Organizations (how businesses operate), Legal Entities (registered corporate structures), People (executives and officers), Locations (physical sites), and Addresses (geocoded physical and mailing addresses). Together they form a complete 360° view of any business.

Domestically, BQ covers 85 million active and inactive organizations, 100 million legal entities, 344 million locations, and 249 million people. Globally, BQ covers 222 countries, 274 million organizations, 226 million legal entities, and 1.2 billion people.

Financial and employment data is available from 2010 to the present. Time-series tables are available at annual (TS), quarterly (TSQ), monthly (TSM), and most-recent (MR) frequencies - giving clients over a decade of historical context for every company.

Yes - this is one of BQ's most distinctive capabilities. BQ provides financial estimates for private companies, including sole proprietors and small businesses that have never published financial disclosures. No comparable commercial coverage exists for this market segment.

BQ aggregates data from 100,000+ government agencies including the IRS, DOL, SEC, SBA, USPS, Secretary of State offices across all 50 jurisdictions, and over 30,000 local jurisdictions. Public web sources supplement government data where coverage is limited.

BQ maintains a continuously updated 'living' database. Employment and payroll data updates monthly; financial data updates quarterly and annually. This contrasts sharply with government data, which can lag by multiple years.

BQ's core portfolio includes: Company Firmographics, Financials & Employment, Corporate Family Tree & Legal Entities, Legal Entity Directors & Officers, Organization Executives, Organization Contacts, Organization Locations, Delaware Stock Entities, Franchise Universe, Healthcare Entities, and Address Universe.

BQ delivers revenue, EBITDA, net income, gross profit, operating expenses, total assets, cost of revenue, and complete balance sheet indicators. All margins and ratios - including gross profit margin, EBITDA margin, return on assets - are computed. Credit scores and probability-of-default models are also included.

BQ offers four delivery modes: bulk data feeds (enterprise flat files with 6,000+ fields), BQ Terminal (interactive web platform), BQ Prospector (lead generation tool), BQ Locator (mapping/location tool), and RESTful APIs for real-time programmatic access.

BQ Terminal is an interactive web platform for analysts, compliance teams, and investment professionals. It provides real-time search, corporate family tree visualization, detailed financials, and risk and compliance indicators - designed for due diligence workflows.

BQ Prospector is a lead generation and data enrichment tool. Users can filter by revenue, geography, industry, headcount, and growth rate, access verified executive contacts, and export CRM-ready lists in CSV, Excel, and JSON formats - compatible with Salesforce, HubSpot, and more.

BQ's RESTful APIs deliver firmographics, financials, legal entities, locations, and employment data in real time. They are used for automated KYB screening, CRM enrichment, AI/ML pipelines, and production workflow integrations.

PE firms, hedge funds, and investment banks use BQ to analyze private companies with the same rigor applied to public ones - identifying acquisition targets via revenue and EBITDA trajectories, mapping corporate family trees, tracking employment as a leading indicator of operational health, and leveraging BQ's Delaware filing data for capital raise analysis.

BQ enables Know Your Business (KYB) checks using authoritative government-sourced data - verifying legal names, EINs, addresses, ownership structures, and beneficial owners. It flags sanctions and compliance risks, identifies UBOs for SMBs, and integrates via API into existing compliance systems for automated screening.

Yes. BQ provides verified revenue, EBITDA, and asset data for private companies - without relying on self-reported inputs. Proprietary credit scores, SMB probability-of-default models, and monthly employment trends make BQ ideal for commercial loan underwriting, portfolio monitoring, and insurance risk assessment.

B2B teams use BQ to build precise prospect lists filtered by financials, headcount, geography, and growth - then enrich their CRM with verified executive contacts and financial health data. BQ identifies accounts showing real employment and revenue growth, triggering outreach at peak buying intent.

The BQ Entity Graph is a unified data model linking all five pillars - Organizations, Legal Entities, People, Locations, and Addresses - through common identifiers including EIN, LEI, CIK, and BQ's proprietary bq_id. It enables seamless navigation from any entity to its complete legal, financial, and operational profile.

OpenData.org is a free global entity reference graph founded by BQ CEO Jose Plehn. Built on the same Five Pillars framework, it covers 324 million organizations, 512 million locations, and 1.2 billion individuals across 222 countries. It is available in CSV and Senzing-ready JSON, fully GDPR and CCPA compliant.

BQ's global dataset covering 222 countries - including firmographics, legal entities, and owner/executive data - is nearing completion, with a full release planned for 2026.

Yes. BQ is the lead government data partner for the National Secure Data Service (NSDS) and a primary data supplier for federal AI initiatives. BQ provides data and analytics capabilities to agencies at no cost, supporting economic analysis, compliance, and operational efficiency.

GDA is BQ's open-source tool for transforming statistical agency data into AI-ready formats. Built on IBM Data Prep Kit, Meta Llama Stack, and BQ's Orchestration Kit, it converts agency outputs into structured, machine-understandable data for AI and ML applications.

BQ holds memberships including: AI Alliance (Executive Board), FINOS (Gold Member, Governing Board), Overture Maps Foundation (General Member), EDM Council, Data Foundation, Linux Foundation (Silver Member), Computing Research Association, and Agentic AI Foundation.