Top 6 Private-Company Deal-Sourcing Databases Used by PE & VC Firms (2025)

In 2025, winning a proprietary deal hinges on catching intent signals while they’re still warm. Lower-middle-market diligence now drags 60–90 days—up from the 45-day cadence most deal teams were trained on—and an average PE fund stays open about 19 months before its final close. Static spreadsheets refreshed weekly can’t keep pace. Below, you’ll find a straight-shooting review of six sourcing platforms every buy-side team talks about—where they shine, where they stall, and why Altss’s hourly OSINT plus live-LP lens is fast becoming the edge that matters.

1 ▪ PitchBook — the broad-spectrum baseline

PitchBook’s platform covers 3 million-plus private companies and deep historical comps, making it the default for pricing benchmarks.
Strengths: rich deal terms, slick Excel plug-ins.
Watch-outs: multi-week lags for sub-$25 m EBIT founders; lists still need manual re-tagging before outreach.

2 ▪ S&P Capital IQ Pro — credit-grade depth

Capital IQ Pro advertises data on 54 million-plus private firms plus risk scores and supply-chain links inside the same screen analysts use for publics.
Strengths: standardized metrics, built-in credit modelling.
Watch-outs: thin ownership-change intel below the upper mid-market; licensing can sting smaller funds.

3 ▪ SourceScrub — event-driven pipelines at scale

SourceScrub hoovers up ≈ 290 000 niche sources and just took Private Equity Wire’s 2025 Deal-Origination Tech award.
Strengths: conference & directory intel, growth alerts when targets cross size thresholds.
Watch-outs: heavy CSV exports mean dedupe headaches; LP depth remains limited.

4 ▪ Grata (inside Datasite) — semantic matchmaking

Datasite bought Grata in June 2025, committing $500 million to push its keyword-level search across ≈ 16 million mid-market names.
Strengths: business-model filters such as “recurring-revenue industrial services,” new Deal Network for live mandates.
Watch-outs: pricing migrating into enterprise bundles; road-map tied to Datasite integration.

5 ▪ CB Insights — momentum signals for thesis builders

CB Insights layers patent, hiring-spike, and media-sentiment analytics atop its global graph and publishes the yearly AI 100 ranking of breakout startups.
Strengths: fast thematic reads, deep sector research.
Watch-outs: sparse ownership data outside tech; seat pricing rises quickly as AI-agent add-ons stack up.

6 ▪ Altss — LPs and deals, synchronised in real time

Altss was engineered for velocity, streaming hourly OSINT on both founders and capital allocators:

• Live OSINT engine. Filings, LinkedIn moves, stealth-domain registrations, podcast quotes, and conference rosters appear the same day they surface.
• Funding-motive analytics. Each signal is tagged as growth capex, recap liquidity, or strategic exit—outreach lands with relevance.
• Dual-lens search. Scan verified LPs (family offices, pensions, sovereigns) and qualified targets side-by-side—capital meets opportunity without platform-hopping.
• Startup & PE-portfolio module (September 2025 beta) delivers ownership-shift alerts and KPI snapshots within minutes.
• Relationship Graph (Q4 2025) visualises GP-LP-founder ties to prioritise warm lanes.
• Straightforward economics. $15 500 per seat, all-in.

Field proof: A leading U.S. investment bank asked Altss for a custom niche screen after incumbents—including PitchBook—kept serving up thin, weeks-old leads. Altss returned a curated universe, and bankers secured 11 founder meetings within four days—a pace the coverage head called “the first time data moved as fast as our bankers.”

Why Altss matters for PE & VC teams

• Originate sooner. Hourly OSINT triggers surface founders before banker teasers circulate—critical now that diligence windows stretch to three months.
• Shorten fundraising. Live LP-allocation signals help pierce the 19-month closing slog with pockets of fresh liquidity.
• Future-proof your edge. OSINT spend is forecast to hit $49 billion by 2029—up 28 % CAGR—and firms that integrate it today will outpace late adopters.

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