vendor-intelligence
(2)
Alium
Alium is a New York-based startup building an AI-powered vendor intelligence platform for enterprise software buyers. It runs structured, compensated 1-on-1 interviews with practitioners - the VPs of marketing, CISOs, and IT directors who actually use the tools - then uses AI to synthesize those conversations into ratings and insights. Founded in 2020 by former CB Insights operators Jonathan Sherry and Alexandre Testu, Alium emerged from stealth in January 2025 with $7M in seed funding, aiming to replace pay-for-play review sites and analyst reports with unbiased peer intelligence, starting with marketing and ecommerce technology.
Marketplace.city
Marketplace.city is a Chicago-based govtech company that helps state and local governments source, validate, and procure technology. Its Clearbox platform turns a repository of historical vendor, contract, and pricing data into managed procurement services (Clearbox Procure) and a research subscription (Clearbox Source), aiming to compress technology buying cycles that once ran months or years down to roughly 100 days. Founded out of a 2016 collaboration with New York City's Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation, the company has supported over 200 governments.