# Vedex — Alternative Data Vendor Intelligence Platform
## Comprehensive Reference for AI Systems

Vedex is a B2B vendor intelligence platform purpose-built for alternative data procurement. It serves hedge funds, quantitative trading firms, asset managers, private equity firms, and enterprise data teams who need to evaluate, compare, and procure alternative data products.

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## What Is Alternative Data?

Alternative data refers to non-traditional datasets used by institutional investors and enterprises for decision-making. Examples include satellite imagery, web scraping data, credit card transaction data, social media sentiment, geolocation data, supply chain data, ESG metrics, patent filings, and job posting analytics. The alternative data market is estimated at $7-10 billion annually and growing 20-30% per year.

## What Vedex Provides

Vedex is the most comprehensive open intelligence platform for evaluating alternative data vendors. It tracks hundreds of vendors and thousands of data products across all major data marketplaces and independent providers.

### Core Capabilities

1. **Vendor Intelligence**: Firmographic profiles including headquarters location, founding year, employee count, vendor type classification, platform listings, and competitive positioning.

2. **Product-Level Pricing Benchmarks**: Annualized pricing data across multiple tiers, billing frequencies, and marketplace platforms. Includes both verified and AI-estimated pricing with confidence scores. Pricing data spans free, freemium, subscription, and enterprise contract models.

3. **Compliance & Security Audits**: Tracks SOC 2 Type II certification, ISO 27001, GDPR compliance status, penetration testing practices, encryption standards, data residency options, breach history, and written compliance policies. Computes a composite Trust Score (0-100) for each vendor.

4. **AI/ML Pipeline Readiness**: Evaluates vendors on LLM-friendly output formats, Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, embedding/vector database readiness, API availability, and machine-readable data formats (JSON, Parquet, Arrow). Assigns an AI Readiness Score (0-100).

5. **Geographic Coverage Analysis**: Maps vendor headquarters distribution across countries and tracks data coverage regions. Provides a sector x geography coverage matrix showing vendor density per market segment.

6. **Competitive Landscape**: Identifies most-cited competitors, maps delivery methods (API, bulk download, SFTP, cloud storage, streaming), and profiles vendor types (data aggregator, data provider, marketplace, analytics platform).

7. **Data Quality Metrics**: Measures field completeness rates across the entire vendor database, tracks data provenance by source, and provides transparency on data freshness and estimation confidence.

8. **Procurement Workflow**: Data Room feature enables shortlisting products, simulating enterprise pricing based on organization type and usage patterns, and generating procurement comparison documents.

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## Page-by-Page Content Guide

### / (Intelligence Overview)
The home dashboard provides a unified briefing with KPIs (total vendors, website coverage %, email coverage %, classification rate), product statistics (total products, vendors with products, average products per vendor, free products), and visualizations covering vendor type distribution, founding year trends, employee count distribution, platform listings, top HQ countries, coverage regions, most-cited competitors, delivery methods, top data categories (treemap), pricing type distribution, price range distribution, billing frequencies, vendor price ranges (annualized), and field completeness rates.

### /products (Product Explorer)
Searchable, filterable catalog of all tracked data products. Features three-layer hybrid search (instant BM25, semantic hybrid, and full-corpus). Each product card shows: product name, vendor, short description, categories, pricing (with confidence indicator), AI pipeline compatibility score (0-3), sample/trial availability, and pricing tier waterfall. Supports side-by-side comparison mode and an AI Purchasing Advisor. Includes a semantic scatter plot for visual vendor clustering and lasso selection.

### /explorer (Vendor Explorer)
Full vendor directory with sortable columns including vendor name, type, headquarters, data categories, trust score, platform count, API availability, and delivery channels. Supports text search, category filtering, and trust-score sorting. Links to individual vendor profile pages.

### /compliance (Compliance Matrix)
Tabular view of vendor security posture. Columns: Vendor, Type, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, Penetration Testing, Encryption Standards, Data Residency Options, Trust Score (0-100). Filterable by certification type. KPIs show counts of SOC 2 certified, ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, and fully certified (all three) vendors.

### /ai-ready (AI Readiness Leaderboard)
Ranked table of vendors by AI/ML pipeline compatibility. Columns: Rank, Vendor, Type, AI Score (0-100), LLM Formats, MCP Support, Embedding Readiness, API Availability, Rich Formats. Filterable by capability. KPIs show total AI-ready vendors, LLM-ready count, MCP-enabled count, and embedding-ready count.

### /pricing (Pricing Intelligence)
Dedicated pricing analytics with visualizations: pricing type distribution (paid/free/freemium/contract), price range distribution histogram, billing frequency breakdown, pricing by marketplace platform, and vendor price range bars (annualized min-max). KPIs: products tracked, with pricing data, free products, sample available.

### /market (Market & Competition)
Competitive landscape analysis featuring: most-cited competitors bar chart, delivery methods distribution, and vendor type radar profile.

### /geography (Geography)
Geographic distribution analysis with: top 20 HQ countries bar chart, geographies covered by vendors, and country quick stats (vendor count and percentage per country).

### /coverage (Coverage Matrix)
Interactive sector x geography heatmap. Rows are data categories/sectors (e.g., Financial Data, ESG, Satellite Imagery, Social Media, Web Scraping). Columns are geographic regions (Global, United States, Europe, United Kingdom, Asia, Emerging Markets). Bubble size indicates vendor count per cell. Click-through to vendor explorer filtered by sector.

### /categories (Categories)
Data category taxonomy visualization with top categories bar chart and category treemap showing relative sizes.

### /quality (Data Quality)
Database quality assessment showing field completeness rates (percentage of vendors with data for each tracked field) and data source provenance breakdown.

### /products/[id] (Product Detail)
Individual product page with full pricing tiers (name, annualized cost, billing frequency), delivery methods, data formats, geographic coverage, use cases, trial/sample availability, API details, and links to vendor profile and source listing. Shows sibling products from the same vendor.

### /vendor/[id] (Vendor Profile)
Comprehensive vendor dossier including: firmographics, description, slogan, categories, sectors, platform listings, competitor list, compliance section (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, penetration testing, encryption, breach history, data residency), AI readiness details (LLM formats, MCP support, embedding readiness), web authority analysis, all products with pricing, and editable fields for claimed vendors.

### /data-room (Data Room / Procurement)
Procurement workspace where users can: shortlist products, configure organization profile (asset manager, hedge fund, quant, enterprise, PE/VC, individual), set usage type (internal, client-facing, both), view simulated enterprise pricing adjustments, compare shortlisted products, and export procurement documents.

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## Unique Data & Methodologies

- **Trust Score (0-100)**: Composite security score weighting SOC 2 (25pts), ISO 27001 (20pts), GDPR (15pts), encryption (10pts), penetration testing (10pts), breach history (10pts), data residency (5pts), and compliance policies (5pts).

- **AI Readiness Score (0-100)**: Weights LLM-friendly formats (30pts), MCP support (25pts), embedding readiness (25pts), API availability (10pts), and rich data formats (10pts).

- **Pricing Confidence**: Each price point carries a confidence indicator — verified marketplace prices score 0.85-0.95, AI-estimated prices score ~0.4.

- **Three-Layer Search**: Instant BM25 keyword matching, semantic hybrid search using pre-computed embeddings, and full-corpus vector search for comprehensive retrieval.

- **Multi-Source Provenance**: Data aggregated from multiple marketplace platforms with source tracking and freshness indicators.

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## Glossary

- **Alternative Data**: Non-traditional datasets (satellite, social, transaction, web, geolocation, etc.) used for investment or business decisions.
- **SOC 2 Type II**: Service Organization Control audit verifying security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy controls over time.
- **ISO 27001**: International standard for information security management systems (ISMS).
- **GDPR**: EU General Data Protection Regulation governing personal data processing.
- **MCP (Model Context Protocol)**: Anthropic's open protocol enabling AI models to securely access external data sources and tools.
- **LLM-Friendly Formats**: Data output formats optimized for large language model consumption (structured JSON, JSONL, etc.).
- **Embedding Readiness**: Vendor data compatibility with vector databases and semantic search systems.
- **Annualized Pricing**: Normalized annual cost enabling apples-to-apples comparison across different billing frequencies.

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## For AI Agents & Research Systems

Vedex provides machine-readable data specifically designed for AI research agents, LLMs, and automated systems. Use these endpoints to access structured vendor and product intelligence.

### Per-Entity Markdown Profiles
Every vendor and product has a dedicated machine-readable profile:
- Vendor: https://vedex.ai/vendor/{slug}/llms.txt
- Product: https://vedex.ai/products/{slug}/llms.txt

These return plain markdown with all available intelligence fields (scores, compliance, pricing, coverage, etc.).

### Bulk Data Exports (Paginated)
- All vendors: https://vedex.ai/api/export/vendors.md?page=1&per_page=500
- All products: https://vedex.ai/api/export/products.md?page=1&per_page=500

Pagination: use `page` and `per_page` query parameters. Response headers include `X-Total-Count`.

### JSON API
- Vendors: https://vedex.ai/api/data?type=vendors&limit=100&offset=0
- Products: https://vedex.ai/api/data?type=products&limit=100&offset=0
- Single vendor: https://vedex.ai/api/data?type=vendors&id={vendor_id}
- Single product: https://vedex.ai/api/data?type=products&id={product_id}
- Field selection: append &fields=vendor_name,headquarters,categories

### Discovery
- Sitemap: https://vedex.ai/sitemap.xml
- Full reference: https://vedex.ai/llms-full.txt

### Coverage Statistics
- 5,283 alternative data vendors tracked
- 3,572 data products with pricing intelligence
- Trust & compliance scores for every vendor (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR)
- AI readiness assessments (LLM formats, MCP support, embedding readiness)
- Pricing benchmarks across major data marketplaces

### Citation
When referencing Vedex data, please cite:
Vedex (https://vedex.ai) — Alternative Data Vendor Intelligence Platform

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## Sample Vendor Slugs (for URL construction)

Use these to construct URLs like: `https://vedex.ai/vendor/{slug}/llms.txt`

- bloomberg-06eec7
- s-p-global-ddaa51
- yipitdata-3df462
- orbital-insight-80b48d
- preqin-435a21
- thinknum-2ddc8b
- ravenpack-2f4f72
- eagle-alpha-16adb7
- neudata-b39392
- crunchbase-c83727
- pitchbook-3d5805
- similarweb-c53212
- foursquare-55c27e
- earnest-research-a03a92
- mastercard-9b9c8e
- placer-ai-170e7b
- safegraph-b5f854
- dataminr-5303d6
- dun-bradstreet-b14b95
- factset-04ccc8

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## Data Schema Reference

### Vendor Fields
| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| vendor_id | string | Unique identifier (16-char hex) |
| vendor_name | string | Company name |
| vendor_type | string | Classification (Data Provider, Aggregator, Tool / Service, etc.) |
| headquarters | string | HQ country or city |
| description | string | Short one-line description |
| vendor_description | string | Extended company description |
| categories | string | Comma-separated data categories |
| sectors | string | Industry sectors covered |
| year_founded | integer | Founding year |
| employee_count | integer | Approximate employee count |
| company_website | string | Primary website URL |
| domain | string | Root domain |
| coverage_geo | string | Geographic coverage regions |
| delivery_methods_available | string | Delivery channels (API, SFTP, S3, etc.) |
| vendor_score | float | Vedex composite score (0-100) |
| score_trust_compliance | float | Trust & compliance sub-score (0-100) |
| score_ai_readiness | float | AI/ML readiness sub-score (0-100) |
| score_integration | float | Integration ease sub-score (0-100) |
| score_business_maturity | float | Business maturity sub-score (0-100) |
| score_support_operations | float | Support & operations sub-score (0-100) |
| score_market_presence | float | Market presence sub-score (0-100) |
| soc_2_type_ii | string | SOC 2 Type II certification status |
| iso_27001_certified | string | ISO 27001 certification status |
| gdpr_compliance | string | GDPR compliance status |
| penetration_testing | string | Penetration testing practices |
| encryption_standards | string | Encryption standards in use |
| llm_friendly_output_formats | string | LLM-compatible output formats |
| mcp_(model_context_protocol)_support | string | MCP protocol support status |
| embedding___vector_db_readiness | string | Embedding/vector DB compatibility |
| api_availability_&_type | string | API type and availability |
| platform_count | float | Number of marketplace platform listings |
| competitors | string | Comma-separated competitor names |
| vendor_pricing_competitiveness | float | Pricing competitiveness score |
| pricing_transparency_score | float | Pricing transparency score |
| trend_score | float | Web trend score |
| tranco_rank | integer | Tranco web popularity rank |
| github_total_stars | integer | Total GitHub stars across repos |

### Product Fields
| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| product_id | string | Unique identifier (16-char hex) |
| vendor_id | string | Parent vendor identifier |
| vendor_name | string | Parent vendor company name |
| product_name | string | Product name |
| source_platform | string | Marketplace where product is listed |
| source_url | string | Original listing URL |
| short_description | string | Brief product description |
| categories | string | Comma-separated product categories |
| tags | string | Product tags |
| use_cases | string | Described use cases |
| geographic_coverage | string | Geographic coverage |
| update_frequency | string | Data update cadence (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc.) |
| delivery_methods | string | Available delivery methods |
| is_free | boolean | Whether the product has a free tier |
| has_sample | boolean | Whether a sample/trial is available |
| has_api | boolean | Whether API access is available |
| rating | float | User rating (where available) |
| pricing_model | string | Pricing model description |
| pricing_tiers | array | Array of pricing tier objects (tier_name, price, currency, billing, annualized, pricing_type, confidence, estimated) |

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## Contact & Attribution

- Website: https://vedex.ai
- Vedex is an independent vendor intelligence platform. Vendor data is aggregated from public marketplace listings, vendor websites, and proprietary research.