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The Crunchbase integration brings private company data into research and pitch work. Ask how a competitor of Contoso Retail is funded, who acquired a pricing software vendor, or which investors back a market entrant, and Hebno answers from Crunchbase with each organisation and round cited. An owner or admin connects Crunchbase once for the organisation. Hebno reads only and never writes to Crunchbase.

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At a glance

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Before you start

You need:
  • An owner or admin role in Hebno.
  • A Crunchbase API licence for your firm. The fields Hebno can read depend on what the licence includes.
  • The API key for that licence. A Crunchbase user with API access finds it in Crunchbase under Account Settings → Integrations → Crunchbase API.
Hebno sends the key in the X-cb-user-key header and uses these Crunchbase API v4 collections:

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Connect Crunchbase

1

Allow the integration

Open Admin → Connectors → Catalogue, find Crunchbase under Company and market data, and set it to Allow.
2

Connect the organisation

Select Connect, paste the API key, then select Test connection. Hebno checks the key and lists the collections your licence includes.
3

Choose teams and data areas

Under Who can use it, choose All teams or pick teams. Under Data areas, choose what members can see. See Data areas.
4

Check access

Access is Read only. Select Save.
The card shows Connected with the licence name. Members in the selected teams can use Crunchbase in chat straight away.

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Data areas

Data areas control what members of the allowed teams can see through the organisation connection. They apply on top of what your Crunchbase licence includes.
Admin connector panel showing who can use it, access and data areas

An organisation connection with team access and data areas. Financial figures default to owners and admins.

To limit Crunchbase to the business development team, open the Crunchbase card in Admin → Connectors and change Who can use it to that team.

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What Hebno reads

Chat reply citing a Crunchbase organisation profile

A Crunchbase organisation profile attached to a chat.

Reads are live. Hebno queries Crunchbase when a request needs it and does not copy Crunchbase data into Hebno. Only what a reply used is stored with the conversation as its sources, each cited with a link to the Crunchbase profile.

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What Hebno writes

Hebno does not write to Crunchbase. It does not create or edit profiles, follow organisations, or build lists in Crunchbase. To track a company for an engagement, link it to the project as described below. Linking marks which Crunchbase organisation belongs to a project, so you can ask “how is the client funded?” without naming it.
  1. Open the project and select Brain.
  2. Under Linked records, select Link record, then Crunchbase.
  3. Search by company name or website and select the organisation. Repeat for competitors you track in the engagement.
In chats tagged to the project, Hebno starts with the linked organisations for any question about funding, ownership or news. See Linked records.

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Use Crunchbase in chat

  • Attach: open the + menu, choose Sources → Crunchbase, and pick an organisation, a person, a funding round or an acquisition. Or type / and choose Crunchbase.
  • Ask: name the company, investor or category in your request. For example:
    Build a table of venture-backed retail pricing start-ups in Europe with total funding, last round and lead investor.
    Summarise the ownership and funding history of the three challengers named in the Contoso pricing review brief.
    Which acquisitions in retail analytics were announced in 2026, and at what price where disclosed?
  • Research runs show a Checking Crunchbase step, with a chip for each organisation, round and acquisition it read.
  • Agents can read Crunchbase on a schedule, for example a weekly digest of funding and acquisitions among linked competitors. Writes an agent proposes elsewhere appear in agent approvals for review.

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Troubleshooting