AI funding due diligence is a documented check that a financing claim matches evidence published by the parties involved. It keeps announcement dates, transaction details, and a database's own timestamps distinct.
TL;DR
Start with a precise claim and locate the source that supports it. A company announcement, an investor statement, and a database entry can each describe different parts of a financing event.
Keep the round amount separate from valuation, and preserve the source's wording about whether financing is completed, announced, planned, or still being discussed. Missing information should remain visible.
Retain the source URL, publication date, relevant passage, and the date you reviewed it. A useful funding record lets another person repeat the check.
Key Takeaways
- Identify the company before comparing figures. Similar names, brands, and domains can refer to different businesses.
- Name the event you are checking. A new financing, an extension, a secondary transaction, and an investor's own fund announcement should not be merged automatically.
- Track dates separately. Publication, transaction, discovery, and database-update dates answer different questions.
- Preserve the financial labels. Round amount, valuation, currency, and investor role each need their own evidence.
- Record uncertainty. An inaccessible source, an unnamed investor, or an ambiguous amount is a reason to keep a verification task open.
- Make the citation useful. Link to the supporting document and explain which statement it supports.
What claim are you trying to verify?
Begin with a sentence that can be checked. For example, you might be checking whether a company announced a particular funding stage, whether a named investor participated, or whether the issuer disclosed a valuation. These are separate claims, even when a database displays them on the same row.
Write down the company identity, the event, and the attribute you need. Include the company's official domain and any relevant former name. This prevents an apparently matching search result from being assigned to the wrong organization.
Then define the limit of your evidence. A public announcement supports a statement about what its publisher announced. Private agreements, ownership arrangements, and settlement details may remain unavailable. Your record should make that boundary clear rather than imply access to documents you have not reviewed.
A claim-by-claim approach also makes corrections smaller. If the valuation is unsupported, you can hold that field for review while retaining a separately supported announcement date or investor statement.
Which sources should you check first?
Look first for material published by the company and the investors involved. Company fundraising pages and dated announcements can state the event, round label, amount, and valuation terminology. Investor announcements can explain participation and identify a role in the financing. Read the actual text; a logo or a company name on a page does not establish every part of a transaction.
Axiom's company-hosted fundraising page illustrates a disclosure that separates funding events and their financial labels. B Capital's investment article about Axiom illustrates a different document type: a dated explanation from an investor. Before combining material from such pages, compare their dates and event descriptions. Sharing a company name does not establish that two documents describe the same round.
News reporting and databases can help you find the relevant announcement. Preserve their attribution when a detail is available only through reporting. An unnamed-source report and an issuer statement have different evidence trails.
Search snippets are useful leads. Open the underlying page before treating the snippet as evidence, because the excerpt may omit a qualification, a date, or the company to which a figure belongs.
Which dates belong in a funding record?
A funding record can have several legitimate dates:
- Publication date: when the supporting announcement or report appeared.
- Transaction date: when the source says the financing event occurred, if it specifies one.
- Discovery date: when your team first found the information.
- Record-update date: when your database entry changed.
- Review date: when someone last checked the evidence.
Keep these fields distinct. A recently updated database row may describe an older event. A later article may summarize several earlier financings. Neither situation creates a new round by itself.
If a source gives only a month or a general period, preserve that precision in your research notes. Avoid quietly inventing a particular day. When two sources disagree, record both dates with their meanings before choosing the value appropriate to your database's policy.
How do you separate the round amount from valuation?
Copy the financial label along with the figure. The amount associated with a financing and the valuation assigned to a business describe different things. A source that discloses one does not necessarily disclose the other.
Preserve any explicit pre-money or post-money label. If the source does not identify the valuation basis, leave that basis unspecified. Avoid converting an assumed ownership percentage into a reported valuation.
Currency needs the same care. Keep the original currency with the original amount. If your analysis also presents a conversion, identify the conversion as a calculation and retain the rate source and date. The calculated value should remain distinguishable from the figure the issuer published.
Check the subject of every number. An article may discuss the company's financing alongside an investor's fund size, a previous round, or another company's transaction. Read enough surrounding text to establish whose amount it is and what it measures.
How do you distinguish completed financing from a target?
Preserve the source's verbs and qualifications. Wording such as “seeking,” “targeting,” or “in discussions” describes a different status from wording that explicitly announces a completed financing. A planned transaction can be important news without becoming a completed-round record.
Also check whether a later announcement updates an earlier report. The later document may confirm some details while changing others. Keep the earlier item in the evidence trail, and identify which source supports the current status.
Do not infer completion from the existence of a presentation, a fundraising page, or a named prospective investor. Your public summary should reflect the status the evidence supports. Where the wording is ambiguous, record the uncertainty and seek a clearer statement.
How do you verify an investor's role?
Look for an explicit relationship between the investor and the financing. A name appearing in an article's navigation, event promotion, founder biography, or discussion of technology suppliers is not enough to attribute participation.
Separate participation from leadership. If a source names a participant without specifying a lead role, preserve the stated participation. Do not promote the first name in a list to lead merely because it appears first.
Resolve aliases carefully. A firm's abbreviated name and legal name may identify the same investor, while similarly named firms may be distinct. Keep a reference to the spelling in the source so that another reviewer can reproduce your decision.
Apply the same evidence standard to familiar and unfamiliar investors. An investor already present in your database still needs support for its relationship to this particular event.
What evidence should you retain?
Store enough information to repeat the review without copying an entire publication. A practical evidence note includes:
| Field | What it records |
|---|---|
| Supporting URL | The specific announcement or document |
| Publisher | The company, investor, outlet, or other source |
| Publication date | The date shown by that source |
| Relevant passage | A short passage identifying the claim and its subject |
| Supported attributes | Which fields the passage establishes |
| Review date | When the source was checked |
| Open questions | What remains missing, ambiguous, or inaccessible |
Keep the passage connected to its subject. A detached number can lose the context that identifies the company, currency, event, or status.
If a page changes, preserve your review note and a permitted reference to the version you consulted. Follow applicable access and reuse rules. Avoid making an inaccessible copy the only explanation of a claim; a reader should still understand what was checked and what remains uncertain.
What should you do when sources conflict or disappear?
First check for an identity or event mismatch. The apparent disagreement may involve different companies, different stages, an earlier financing, or a distinction between an announced amount and a broader funding total.
Next compare the wording and publication sequence. A correction or a later issuer statement may explain the difference. Retain the original attribution when you update the record, so the revision has an understandable history.
If the conflict remains unresolved, publish the limitation alongside the field or hold the disputed attribute for review. Avoid averaging conflicting values or selecting the more impressive figure.
An unavailable page requires a separate judgment. A failed request or a subscription barrier prevents a new check; it does not establish that the historical record was false. Look for another accessible statement from the parties involved, and mark the verification status accurately.
How can a team make reviews repeatable?
Use the same questions for each record: Is this the correct entity? Does the source describe this event? Which attributes does it support? What remains unresolved?
Separate data entry from the decision to treat a claim as supported. A candidate record can preserve useful research leads while its uncertain fields remain clearly marked. Reviewers should be able to change one attribute without losing the rest of the evidence.
Record corrections with their reason and review date. This prevents a later import from silently replacing a reviewed decision with the same weak inference. When a new source resolves a gap, update the record and retain the explanation.
For published summaries, check the final page as well as the stored record. Titles, descriptions, tables, and related pages can repeat a financial claim. A correction is complete when the intended public surfaces reflect the reviewed information.
FAQ
Is a database entry sufficient evidence for a financing claim?
A database entry is a useful starting point. Follow its source attribution and verify the particular attribute you intend to cite. If the supporting document is missing, describe the limitation rather than implying that you have independently checked it.
Can an investor announcement replace a company announcement?
It can support what the investor explicitly states. Read its date, event description, and role carefully. It may not disclose every term or describe the same event as another document.
Should an old record be deleted when its source is inaccessible?
Inaccessibility alone does not settle the record's accuracy. Preserve the known evidence trail, mark the review limitation, and seek an accessible supporting statement before making a stronger conclusion.
Does verification guarantee that a record is complete?
No. A review establishes what the available evidence supports. Undisclosed terms, private documents, and later updates can remain outside that evidence. Keep the review date and unresolved questions visible.
Sources
- Axiom — Fundraising: a company-hosted disclosure page separating funding events and financial labels.
- B Capital — Why We Invested in Axiom: a dated investor explanation, useful for checking attribution and document context.
AI Funding provides linked records for discovering financing events. Use those records alongside the original announcements and a documented verification process before citing a claim.
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