Overview
The Crunchbase connector brings live Crunchbase data into Perplexity. Once connected, you can research companies, analyze funding activity, and build sourcing lists through natural conversation, with every answer drawn from Crunchbase. The same company profiles, funding rounds, people, investors, and acquisitions available through the Crunchbase API, plus Crunchbase predictions and insights.
The connection uses the Crunchbase MCP server. Your AI assistant picks the right tool for each request automatically: expert tools handle plain-language questions, and structured tools run exact searches with explicit criteria across stage, geography, dates, amounts, and dozens more fields.
Before you begin
You'll need:
- An active MCP seat on your Crunchbase account. MCP is purchased per workspace, and access is assigned per user as an MCP seat by your workspace admin. An MCP seat includes Crunchbase's highest level of data access, including predictions and insights. See Managing MCP Access for seat assignment, or contact your account team to add MCP to your workspace.
- An eligible Perplexity plan. Enterprise and Max users
- For Perplexity Enterprise: Your Perplexity admin may need to enable the Crunchbase connector for your organization before individual users can connect.
There is no separate data contract with Perplexity. You authenticate with the Crunchbase entitlement you already have.
Connect your account
- In Perplexity, open Settings → Connectors
- Find Crunchbase in the connector list and select Connect.
- Sign in with your Crunchbase account when prompted. This is an account that holds an MCP seat in Crunchbase.
- Approve the authorization request. You'll be returned to Perplexity with the connector active.
Setup takes a few minutes. Once connected, Perplexity draws on Crunchbase automatically when a question calls for company, funding, investor, or people data — you don't need to invoke it explicitly.
What you can do
Anything you can ask of Crunchbase data, you can ask through Perplexity. Some starting points:
- Research any company in seconds. Ask for a pre-meeting brief on a target and get funding history, leadership, and competitors in one response.
- Screen and source at scale. Describe your thesis in plain language ("US fintech companies that raised a seed or Series A in the last 60 days") and get a filtered list, not a summary of one.
- Analyze funding and investor activity. Trace who's investing in a space, how round sizes are trending, and which portfolios are most active.
- Map market landscapes. Build a view of a segment, assess how crowded or funded it is, and identify the companies your keyword searches would miss.
- Prioritize with predictions and insights. Ask which companies in a segment are trending toward a raise, or pull growth signals and momentum indicators to rank an account list — included with every MCP seat.
Data access
Your connector exposes the data your Crunchbase entitlement includes. MCP seats include the full data surface — company profiles, funding rounds, people, investors, acquisitions, and predictions and insights. Data access for applications built on the Crunchbase MCP server differs from individual seat access; if you're building an application, contact your account team.
Troubleshooting
- Crunchbase doesn't appear in the connector list. Enterprise users will need to ask your Perplexity admin to enable it.
- Sign-in fails or you see an access error. Confirm you have an MCP seat assigned on your Crunchbase workspace. Seat assignment is managed by your workspace admin — see Managing MCP Access.
- Answers don't include Crunchbase data. Confirm the connector shows as active in Perplexity's settings, then re-ask with an explicit reference ("using Crunchbase data, …").
- You need MCP added to your contract. Contact your account team.
Click here to learn more about the Crunchbase MCP.