Dealmaking

Researchly Builds an A.I. Database of 7 Million DACH Companies

co-produced by AI27. October 2026, 10:23

Few people looking for a buyer for a family business end up on PitchBook, and the Austrian start-up Researchly wants to fill exactly that gap in the Mittelstand. The young company from Wels has built an A.I.-powered company database for Austria, Germany and Switzerland that covers about 7 million businesses and is designed to deliver M&A analyses at the push of a button. Its target users are advisers, investors and companies searching for acquisition targets, buyers or competitors.

Founders From Upper Austria

Researchly was founded by Leopold Bosankic, Felix Kefer and Stefan Endl, who each hold about a third of Researchly FlexCo, according to the Austrian company register. Mr. Bosankic is managing director and chief executive, Mr. Endl leads technology as chief technology officer, and Mr. Kefer is chief A.I. officer. The project began in 2022 as a tool for automated competitor analysis, and the company, based in Wels, was entered in the company register in early 2025. The team currently has four people, and no outside funding has been disclosed.

7 Million Companies From Three Registers

The data comes from the official business registers of the DACH region: Austria’s Firmenbuch, Germany’s Handelsregister and Switzerland’s Zefix. On top of that, Researchly adds several layers of information, enriched with A.I. from websites, news and live web searches and checked against the register data:

Core data: Headquarters, owners, management, capital and financial statements, including balance sheet comparisons.
Change signals: A so-called Heat Score from 0 to 100 shows how much is happening at a company, for example changes in shareholders, job postings, patents or news coverage.
Operational signals: The business model as a Business Model Canvas, positioning, competitors, technologies and digital presence.
Company network: A graph shows holdings, partnerships and group structures, and an early prototype maps the robotics industry.

Instead of relying on rigid NACE industry codes, users can search semantically, for example for “manufacturers of industrial robots with fewer than 50 employees.” Researchly publicly shows what a profile looks like using the smart home maker Loxone as an example. Only part of the data is visible on the free site, however, and the rest sits behind a paywall.

Four A.I. Agents for M&A Analysis

The core feature for dealmakers is automated M&A research. Starting from a single company profile, four A.I. agents produce an analysis: one looks for strategic buyers, one for potential acquisition targets, one estimates the company’s value based on listed peers, and one identifies suitable financial investors. There is also a so-called enrichment matrix, in which a separate A.I. agent researches each cell of a table and cites its sources.

That matters especially for the Mittelstand. Thousands of family businesses in Austria and Germany will be looking for successors in the coming years, and for small deals, expensive research by investment banks often does not pay off.

Pricing

Researchly sells access by subscription. According to its pricing page, there are three tiers:

Basic: €49 a month for core data and simple search, with a 14-day free trial.
Pro: €349 a month, including data enrichment, lead generation, benchmarking, and market and competitor analysis.
Plus: €499 a month with all data layers, including technologies, group structures, M&A activity and insolvencies.

Custom offers are available for larger data volumes, API access and teams. Recently, the start-up has added a score for ideal customer profiles, curated lists on deep tech, robotics and mobility start-ups, and short analyses of individual companies.

The Competition

The market for company data is fiercely contested. Large deals are dominated by international databases such as PitchBook, S&P Capital IQ and Moody’s Orbis, which often cover small private companies in German-speaking countries only patchily. Researchly’s closest rival is the Hamburg-based North Data, which processes register data on more than 100 million companies from 27 countries. Researchly aims to stand out with its own M&A taxonomy, its company network and data on business models. New A.I.-native offerings are also entering the market, such as Agentic Firmenbuch, which makes Austrian and German register data directly accessible to A.I. agents, and the Finnish start-up Comparables.ai, which recently raised $6 million for its A.I.-powered search for M&A deals.