Inven Finds Companies — AlphaLens Finds What They Ship
Inven indexes 28 million company profiles. AlphaLens has indexed 12 million products — the actual things those companies build, sell, and bring to market. That's a different unit of analysis, and it surfaces deals that company-level search can't reach. Pair that with automated deck ingestion, Web Agents, and native CRM sync, and you get a full pipeline system — not just a discovery tool.
Inven indexes 28M company profiles. AlphaLens indexes 12M+ products — the things companies actually build and sell. Both use AI for discovery. They search across different things.
Inven is genuinely useful for outbound: AI similarity search, intent-to-sell signals, and 430M+ contacts make it a fast path from discovery to outreach. If your workflow ends at 'build a list and send emails,' it delivers.
Where it stops: no inbound deck processing, no Web Agents for live DD, CRM integration pushes records but doesn't map fields, and the API is incomplete per user reviews. AlphaLens picks up where discovery ends — automating enrichment, research, and CRM routing across your entire pipeline.
How AlphaLens and Inven Actually Differ
| Feature |  | Inven |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Agentic sourcing & triage platform | AI-powered private company discovery and outbound sourcing tool |
| Inbound deck processing | Native. Drop a DocSend/Pitch.com URL — auto-extract, enrich, create CRM entity | None. Inven is outbound-only — inbound triage is entirely manual |
| Search | Semantic search across 12M+ indexed products from 10M+ tracked companies — the only platform that indexes live product-level data at scale. Search by what products do, not company descriptions or sector tags. | Natural language and AI similarity search across 28M+ companies — a genuine strength, though result quality degrades as volume increases per user feedback |
| Custom due diligence | Deploy Web Agents that answer your bespoke questions with cited sources, formatted to your CRM field constraints | No equivalent — searches are limited to their internal database; live internet research is not supported |
| CRM integration | Native field-level sync to Affinity, Attio, Salesforce, HubSpot — included in every plan | List-level export to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Affinity — pushes company records but does not map to specific CRM fields or pipeline stages |
| Coverage approach | White-glove onboarding: bring your data, we learn your market, guarantee coverage parity, and fine-tune our indexing to your thesis. No other platform does this | 28M+ companies globally, strong on private market breadth including emerging markets; accuracy of revenue estimates and contact data is inconsistent per user reviews |
| Pricing model | Credit-based, starting at $1K/mo. No per-seat fees. Full API access included | Per-user annual contracts, list price ~$10K/user/yr. Heavily discounted in practice, but locked into annual commitments. API is a separately priced add-on |
| Chrome Extension | Deep company intelligence on any website or LinkedIn page — team, growth metrics, products, funding, similar companies in one click | Chrome extension available for in-context company lookups while browsing |
| API access | Full API included in every plan — no separate tiers between web app and API | API exists but is a paid add-on priced separately; users on G2 flag it as incomplete and not covering all platform functionality |
| Funding data | Real-time funding signals powered by AI agents, proprietary data, and community partners — a continuously refreshed flywheel with global coverage | Funding history present; stronger on ownership structure and intent signals than raw funding round data |
| Intent-to-sell signals | Not a dedicated feature — we surface growth signals and live intelligence, but do not specifically model transaction readiness | Proprietary intent-to-sell signals that flag companies showing leadership changes, hiring patterns, or other behavioral indicators of sell-side readiness. A genuine differentiator for outbound M&A teams Inven strength |
| Contact data at scale | Not our primary focus — we surface company and product intelligence, not executive contact sequences for outreach campaigns | 430M+ professional contacts — strong for direct outreach to founders, CEOs, and deal decision-makers Inven strength |
Your Pipeline Today vs. Your Pipeline on AlphaLens
- 1Receive deck via email or DocSend
- 2Read it manually — Inven can't help with inbound
- 3Search Inven for the company
- 4Export as list record, manually map CRM fields
- 1Run AI similarity search in Inven
- 2Export target list to CRM as records
- 3Manually enrich — Inven's search is database-bound
- 4Research DD questions yourself in a browser
AlphaLens handles both motions in a single system. Inbound decks are auto-parsed, enriched, and pushed to your CRM. Outbound searches run daily, feeding new matches into the same pipeline. No manual steps, no context-switching.
Built for the way you actually work
Search That Thinks Like You Do
Inven's AI similarity search is genuinely useful for private company discovery. But Inven indexes companies. AlphaLens has indexed over 12 million products in the past year — the actual things companies build and sell. This is not a marginal improvement over Inven's search — it is a different unit of analysis entirely. Inven finds companies that look like other companies. AlphaLens finds products that compete in the same market, regardless of how the parent company is categorised.
All searches can be saved with alerts, and results export to CSV with one click.
12 Million Products Indexed — and Counting
Inven indexes 28 million company profiles — names, descriptions, sectors, revenue estimates. AlphaLens indexes products — the actual things those companies build, sell, and bring to market. With over 12 million products indexed in the past year alone, this gives AlphaLens a fundamentally different view of the market. Companies are containers. Products are what the market actually trades on.
Don't just find companies that look similar — find every product competing in a market. Map a vertical by what tools do, how they're positioned, and who they target. A company Inven surfaces as 'logistics software' might have three distinct products serving freight forwarding, warehouse management, and last-mile delivery. Product-level indexing sees all three.
A company described as 'Enterprise Software' on Inven might be the market leader in AI-powered compliance tooling for fintechs. Product-level indexing finds them. Company-level descriptions don't capture this granularity.
12 million products indexed in the past year, continuously updated. No competitor — including Inven — has attempted this. It is AlphaLens's deepest structural moat and the reason our search surfaces deals that company-level databases cannot.
Product-level search is available on every AlphaLens plan, including API access.
Agentic Triage, Enrichment & Research
Inven surfaces companies efficiently. What it can't do is triage them, route them to the right team, score them for priority, enrich them with live data, or answer the questions that come after discovery. AlphaLens does all of this automatically — every company that enters your pipeline is scored, routed, enriched with deep entity data, and then handed to Web Agents that go live on the internet to answer your most specific DD questions.
Coverage Built Around You, Not Everyone
Inven's 28M company breadth is real — but breadth without depth is a vanity metric. Stale revenue estimates and inconsistent contact data are recurring themes in user reviews. AlphaLens doesn't try to index everything. We index what matters to you, deeply and accurately.
End-to-End Workflow Automation
Inven is a discovery tool. AlphaLens is a pipeline system. The distinction matters the moment you need to manage inbound alongside outbound — which every active deal team eventually does.
Sourcing → triage → enrichment → scoring → CRM routing. End to end.
Real-time ocean and air freight market intelligence
Benchmarking and analytics across 200,000+ freight lanes. Data-driven procurement tools and market monitoring.
The company offers real-time ocean and air freight market intelligence solutions with benchmarking and analytics capabilities. The company provides data-driven procurement tools and market monitoring services across 200,000+ freight lanes, enabling rate analysis and performance optimization.
Products (3)
- Ocean IntelligenceReal-time ocean freight rate benchmarking and market analyti…
- Air IntelligenceReal-time air freight rate benchmarking platform combining p…
- Carbon Emissions IndexData solution that tracks and analyzes carbon intensity of g…
Growth & signals
Latest funding
- Private Equity$9.3M2025-09-23Investors:Apax Partners
- Series D$80.0M2022-09-13Investors:Lugard Capital Limited, Apax Partners
Digital freight forwarder and customs broker with real-time visibility and analytics for ocean and air freight.
Real-time visibility platform for ocean, air, truck, and rail freight with predictive analytics.
Online freight marketplace and rate benchmarking for international shipping.
A Chrome Extension That Goes Deep
Both platforms have a Chrome extension. AlphaLens goes deeper — surfacing the full competitive landscape around any company you're browsing, with growth metrics, product data, funding history, and similar companies all in one panel.
- Full company profile — team, incorporation details, addresses
- Growth metrics — headcount trends, web traffic, social following
- Product data and descriptions
- Funding history
- All similar products in the market — navigate to any of them instantly
It's like having an analyst tab open for every company you encounter online.
Transparent and team-friendly
Inven's list price is approximately $10,000 per user per year on annual contracts. In practice they discount heavily — sometimes significantly — but you won't know the real number until you've been through a sales process, and you'll be committed to a 12-month contract regardless. The API is priced separately and, per user reviews, doesn't cover all platform functionality.
AlphaLens is credit-based, starting at $1,000/month. Your entire team shares a generous credit pool — no per-seat fees, no artificial access gates. Full API and CRM integration are included in every plan, with no separate negotiation required.
Credit usage — you only pay for what you use
Included in every plan — no add-ons
- Full API access — same capabilities as the web app
- Native CRM integrations with granular field-level mapping
- Chrome Extension
- Saved searches with real-time alerts
- CSV export
- Pipeline automation
When Inven Might Be the Right Choice
We believe in being straightforward about this. Many of our customers use AlphaLens alongside Inven — using us for top-of-funnel velocity and pipeline automation, and Inven for deep-dive financial diligence later in the process.
Intent-to-sell signals
Inven's proprietary intent-to-sell model analyzes behavioral signals — leadership changes, hiring patterns, news activity, and other indicators — to flag private companies that may be approaching a transaction. For outbound M&A teams trying to time their outreach, this is a genuinely useful differentiator. AlphaLens surfaces growth signals and live intelligence but does not specifically model transaction readiness.
Contact data at scale for outbound sequences
430M+ professional contacts make Inven a reasonable one-stop shop for teams that want to find private company targets and immediately launch outreach campaigns. If your workflow flows directly from discovery into sequenced email outreach, having contacts in the same platform saves a step. AlphaLens is not an outreach platform.
Company-level similarity search
Inven's 'find me companies like this one' workflow is a fast way to build comparable lists at the company level. It works well for outbound list-building when you know the shape of what you're looking for. AlphaLens's product-level indexing represents a fundamentally different capability — searching across what companies build rather than how they're described — but for teams whose workflow is strictly 'give me 50 companies that look like this one,' Inven's similarity search is functional and well-reviewed.
Breadth of global private company coverage
28M+ companies across developed and emerging markets gives Inven genuine breadth. For teams sourcing across multiple geographies simultaneously, particularly in markets where other databases have thin coverage, Inven's indexing investment shows.
Frequently Asked Questions
See AlphaLens in Action
Book a 15-minute demo and see how AlphaLens automates your sourcing pipeline — from inbound deck to enriched CRM entry.
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