How to Research a Private Company: 8 Steps Using Public Records

A private company files no 10-K, holds no earnings calls and publishes no proxy statement. It still leaves a trail. It raises money under exemptions that leave a notice on EDGAR, registers entities in the states where it operates, talks to the press, signs deals with public companies that have to disclose them, and competes in industries where every public peer reports each quarter on the same customers, costs and constraints.

The eight steps below work for a private software company, a consumer brand or an industrial manufacturer. Each step includes a short example from Crusoe, the Denver AI data center developer that announced a Series F at a $30.9 billion post-money valuation in September 2026 and, as of this writing, had not filed for an IPO.

The method at a glance

1. Start with the company's own EDGAR footprint

• Look up the company name in EDGAR. A private company that sells securities under Regulation D files a Form D within 15 days of the first sale.
• What you get: the legal name and address, the amount offered and sold, and the executives and directors listed as related persons. A Form D does not give a valuation.
• Check for investment vehicles named after the company. Single-purpose vehicles often file their own Form D, and the name can show whether outside capital went in as debt or equity.

Example: Crusoe's holding company has Form D filings from 2022 and 2024, and an investment firm filed separate ones for vehicles named Upper90 Crusoe Loan SPV and Upper90 Crusoe Equity V SPV.

2. Check state and local records

• Search the Secretary of State in the state of incorporation and in each state where the company operates. You get the legal entity name, formation date, registered agent and status, and often the officers or managers. Delaware, where many companies incorporate, shows little without a fee, so check the operating states too.
• Search by name for related entities. Subsidiaries and project-level LLCs often carry the parent's name, and each one points to a site, a financing or a partner.
• Pull UCC filings. A UCC-1 financing statement names the secured lender and describes the collateral, which shows who is lending to the company and against what.
• Check permits and local records. State construction registrations, county tax abatement agreements and zoning applications often state a project's size and estimated cost.

Example: Crusoe's first Abilene campus sat in a Delaware entity named Crusoe Abilene, LLC, the kind of single-site LLC a name search turns up. In Texas, news reports citing state construction filings put estimated costs at about $1 billion for two additional buildings at its Goodnight campus.

3. Run the news

• Search a news database. Factiva, which many business libraries and companies license, covers newspapers, trade journals and newswires going back decades. That makes it practical to trace a company from its first funding round to today.
• Read the local business press. The Business Journals publish local editions in dozens of U.S. metros and cover private companies that national outlets skip. Founder interviews there often give revenue, headcount and expansion plans, and the annual lists rank local private companies by revenue or employees.
• Check rankings that require disclosure. Fastest-growing company lists such as the Inc. 5000 publish the revenue growth companies submitted to qualify.
• Add trade press, press releases and job postings. Trade publications cover product launches and customer wins, and job postings show where the company is hiring and for what.
• Source and date every figure. Numbers from interviews and press releases are self-reported. Note who said it and when, and check it against filings where you can.

Example: Crusoe's Series F announcement disclosed more than $140 billion in total contracted value and over 6 GW of contracted capacity, numbers a private company has no obligation to file. Published estimates of its 2025 revenue range from about $535 million to nearly $1 billion, which is why every press figure needs a source and a date.

4. Search everyone else's SEC filings

• Use EDGAR full-text search. It covers filings back to 2001 and is the most useful free tool for private company research.
• Expect name collisions. Filter by filing date or exclude unrelated filers before reading.
• Read each mention in context. A name can appear as a customer, supplier, partner or competitor. The results are your first draft of both the comp set and the counterparty list.

Example: A search for "Crusoe" is dominated by Transmeta, a chipmaker that sold a Crusoe processor in the early 2000s. Past that, the results include CoreWeave, Applied Digital, IREN and a Blue Owl real estate vehicle.

5. Read the counterparty's exhibits

• Landlords, joint venture partners and lenders often file financials that the private company never has to.
• Look in exhibit lists, where audited statements for joint ventures and significant investees are attached to 10-Ks.
• Read the notes. They often explain ownership changes and how a project was financed.

Example: Blue Owl Real Estate Net Lease Trust's FY2025 10-K attaches audited financials for the first two buildings of Crusoe's Abilene, Texas campus. The notes show Crusoe sold 92.26% of the joint venture to a Blue Owl entity the same day a hyperscale tenant leased all of the space.

6. Build comps from every industry it touches

• List the company's lines of business, then find public peers for each one. Many private companies span more than one industry.
• Add customers and suppliers. Their capex plans, pricing and guidance set the conditions the private company works in.
• Decide the weighting. Which group you lean on decides the valuation story: growth multiples, cash flow multiples or something in between.

Example: Crusoe sources power, develops data centers and runs a GPU cloud, so its comps span three industries. From Data Centers: CoreWeave, Equinix, Digital Realty and Iron Mountain. From Energy & Power: Constellation Energy. From Big Tech / Cloud Platforms: its reported customers Oracle, Microsoft and Meta.

7. Size the market from the comps' own claims

• Where to look: the business section of a 10-K or S-1, investor presentations filed as 8-K exhibits, and the opening remarks on earnings calls.
• Check what the number includes. A category figure often counts spending the company itself doesn't capture.
• Check who produced it. Many management figures are third-party forecasts. Note the research firm and date, and watch whether the figure changes between filings.
• Combine sizing from every industry in the comp set, since one industry's figure rarely covers the whole business. Each SeventhBiz industry page, such as Data Centers, collects these figures verbatim with the filing or call each came from.

Example: CoreWeave's S-1 cited Bloomberg Intelligence research putting AI training and inference infrastructure spending at about $399 billion by 2028. That figure includes servers, storage and networking, much of which a GPU cloud buys and does not sell.

8. Test the comps against their own filings

• Read the competition section. Companies rarely name competitors there, which is why the full-text search in step 4 matters.
• Read the proxy peer group. The companies a board benchmarks executive pay against show how it frames its own value.
• Read the earnings calls for the industry questions, such as pricing, demand, capacity and financing. The public companies answer them every quarter, and the answers apply to private peers too.

Example: CoreWeave's 2025 compensation peer group is made up of software, security and networking companies such as Snowflake, Datadog and Cloudflare, with no data center operator, utility or GPU cloud on the list.

Where SeventhBiz fits

Steps 6 through 8 are the ones that repeat every quarter. SeventhBiz reads the filings and earnings calls of the public companies in each industry it covers within hours of each filing. Each industry page collects the signals, management's market sizing and M&A activity in one place, so the comp work for a private company in Data Centers, Energy & Power or any of the 50+ industries starts from a current read.

Frequently asked questions

Do private companies file with the SEC?

Most private companies do not file annual or quarterly reports. Many do file a Form D when they raise money under Regulation D, and a company preparing to go public files an S-1.

How do you find a private company's revenue?

Private companies rarely publish it. The most useful public figures usually come from interviews and profiles in the business press, local business journal lists and fastest-growing company rankings, where the company supplied the number itself. Note the source and date of each figure, since self-reported numbers vary.

What can a Secretary of State search tell you about a private company?

The legal entity name, state and date of formation, registered agent and status, and often its officers. A name search can also turn up subsidiaries and project-level LLCs. It rarely includes financial information.

Can you find financial statements for a private company?

Sometimes, in other companies' filings. Public joint venture partners, landlords and lenders may attach financial statements for entities they own with a private company.

How do you find comparable public companies for a private company?

Search EDGAR for the company's name to see which public companies mention it, then add public peers from each industry the business operates in. Check the list against how those companies describe their own competition.

How do you find the total addressable market for a private company?

Start with the market sizing its public peers state in their 10-Ks, S-1s, investor presentations and earnings calls. Note the source behind each figure and what it includes, then combine figures from every industry the company operates in.

Does SeventhBiz cover private companies?

SeventhBiz reads public company filings. It gives a read on an industry through its public companies, which is how many teams benchmark a private company against its public peers.

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Last reviewed October 30, 2026. Information about Crusoe is drawn from SEC filings and published news reports as of that date.