Free tier: company and market lookup, 180 calls/day

Cybersecurity intelligence
for your AI workflows

Connect Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client to The Signal. Query companies, investors, funding rounds, and M&A activity with natural language.

Get started View Plans →
7,156
Cybersecurity companies
5,686
Investors tracked
8,915
Funding rounds
2,218
M&A deals

How it works

Three steps to cybersecurity market intelligence in your AI workflows.

1

Sign up

Create your free Signal account in 30 seconds. No credit card required.

2

Connect

Add The Signal's MCP server URL to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client.

3

Ask

Authenticate via your browser, then ask questions in natural language.

Connect the MCP

Before you begin

You need a free Signal account

The MCP server authenticates against your Signal account. Create one first (takes 30 seconds, no credit card), then come back to connect your client.

Create free account I already have one
1

In Claude or Claude Desktop, open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector.

2

Set the name to "The Signal" and paste this connector URL:

https://mcp.returnonsecurity.com/mcp
3

Sign in with your Signal account when Claude redirects you. Open a new chat. The Signal's tools will appear in the connector menu.

1

Run this in your terminal:

claude mcp add signal-mcp https://mcp.returnonsecurity.com/mcp
2

Claude Code opens your browser. Sign in with your Signal account to authorize.

3

Confirm the server is connected:

claude mcp list
1

In Cursor, open Settings → MCP → Add Server.

2

Paste this server URL:

https://mcp.returnonsecurity.com/mcp
3

Cursor opens a browser window. Sign in with your Signal account to authorize. The server will show as Connected in Settings → MCP.

1

Run these in your terminal:

codex mcp add signal-mcp https://mcp.returnonsecurity.com/mcp
codex mcp login signal-mcp
2

Codex opens your browser. Sign in with your Signal account to authorize.

1

Add a server with this URL in your MCP client's config:

https://mcp.returnonsecurity.com/mcp
2

Use these transport settings:

Transport: Streamable HTTP

Auth: OAuth 2.1 (handled by your MCP client)

3

On first use your client opens a browser for the OAuth flow. Sign in with your Signal account.

Free is enough to screen the market: look up a company, size a category, see who the top investors are (180 calls/day, no credit card). Pro and Enterprise answer the harder questions, like who is likely to buy a company and which categories are consolidating (400+ calls/day). View Plans →

Example prompts

Ask these questions in natural language. Your AI tool translates them into the right tool calls.

Screening
"Which Series B+ cloud security companies in Europe raised funding in the last 12 months?"
Market Overview
"Give me a 1-quarter overview of cybersecurity funding and M&A."
Hot Markets
"Tell me about the Post-Quantum Security market: who's funded, who's investing, and is it heating up or cooling?"
Company Deep-Dive
"Enrich Wiz with funding history, investor network, and growth signals."
What's New ENT
"What funding rounds has The Signal added since last Tuesday?"
Relationship
"How is Sequoia connected to CrowdStrike?"
Investor Analysis
"Which PE firms are most active in identity security?"
Likely Acquirers
"Who are the most likely acquirers for a CSPM company like Wiz?"
Exit Readiness PRO
"How ready is Netskope to exit, and is it more likely to IPO, get bought, or go private?"
Corporate Lineage
"What did FireEye become, and what happened to the pieces?"
IPO History
"Which cybersecurity companies have filed or listed, and what did they raise at listing?"
Benchmarking
"Is a $40M Series B in cloud security big or small? Show me where it sits in the distribution."
Consolidation PRO
"Which security categories are consolidating fastest, and who's doing the buying?"
Cross-Border Flows PRO
"Which countries are US investors funding most in cyber, and how has that shifted in two years?"
Acquirer History PRO
"Map everything Palo Alto Networks has acquired and what categories they were in."
Partnership Overlap PRO
"Do CrowdStrike and Zscaler share partners, and which ones overlap?"
Distress Signals PRO
"Which funded security companies have had layoffs or shut down in the last year?"
Pace of Funding PRO
"Is identity security funding accelerating or cooling? Compare this year to last."
Forecast PRO
"Based on the last three years, what should Q4 cyber funding look like?"
Look-Alikes PRO
"Find companies similar to Vanta that haven't raised since 2023."
Missing Something?
"Tell The Signal I need breach-cost data by sector. It isn't in the toolset."

Workflows worth automating

Single questions are the easy part. These are multi-step jobs an agent can run on a schedule and hand you the result. Each one chains several tools together.

Competitive Watch
"Every Monday, tell me which of my 12 named competitors raised, got acquired, hired, or had layoffs last week, and skip the weeks where nothing happened."
Deal Sourcing PRO
"Find Series A/B companies in categories that are consolidating, whose investors have a track record of exits, and that haven't raised in 18 months. Rank by exit readiness."
Diligence Pack PRO
"Build me a one-page brief on this company: funding history, investor quality, closest competitors, likely acquirers, category momentum, and any distress signals."
Category Sizing PRO
"How much capital has gone into SSPM in three years, how many companies are funded, who leads, and is it consolidating or still fragmenting?"
Board Update
"Draft the market section of our board deck: quarter's funding and M&A totals, the notable deals in our category, and how our raise compares to peers."
Partner Targeting PRO
"Who partners with companies like ours but not with us, and which of them share an investor we could get a warm intro through?"

Available tools

Every real market question starts as a research project. Who else backed this founder. Which acquirer keeps buying in this category. Is this space consolidating or just loud. That is a day of tab-hopping, and the answer is stale by the time you write it down.

Ask it in the chat window you already have open instead. Free answers who and what: the companies, the money, the investors, the exits. Pro answers so what: where capital is moving, who is likely to buy, which companies rise and fall together. Enterprise checks your own list against the whole market in one pass.

FREE in every plan PRO Pro, Enterprise ENT Enterprise only

Free tools 12 tools, no credit card

Companies
search_companies FREE
Filter companies by category, stage, geography, status, and funding. Free searches the top 1,000 by funding, 10 results at a time.
enrich_company FREE
One company's profile, any company, with the last 3 rounds on Free. Pro adds full history, competitors, investor network, growth signals, and exit score.
Markets
get_market_overview FREE
Funding and M&A totals with top companies, top investors, and recent unicorns.
get_category_momentum FREE
Which security categories are heating up or cooling, ranked.
Investors
get_investor_centrality FREE
The most connected investors, scored by graph centrality.
get_investor_tiers FREE
Investor tier classification with deal metrics. Free shows Tier 1.
Public markets and lineage
get_company_ipo FREE
IPO and S-1 history: filing and listing dates, price, capital raised, exchange, ticker.
get_company_public_lifecycle FREE
Public-market status and dates: went public, taken private, and years to each.
get_entity_transitions FREE
Corporate lineage as dated edges: FireEye to Trellix, F-Secure to WithSecure.
Reference
list_categories FREE
Every product category, grouped by domain. The valid filter values for every other tool.
list_countries FREE
Every country and continent with cybersecurity activity.
get_data_status FREE
Data freshness: last sync, node and edge counts, cache version.

Pro tools 22 tools, higher limits

Investors
search_investors PRO
Find investors by sector focus, deal activity, geography, and type (VC, PE, corporate).
get_investor_portfolio PRO
One investor's full deal history: company, amount, stage, date, and category per round.
find_similar_investors PRO
"Who invests like Ten Eleven Ventures?" Matched on portfolio thesis, not name.
Funding and valuation
get_funding_rounds PRO
Rounds filtered by company, category, country, stage, investor, size, or date.
get_funding_timeseries PRO
Funding bucketed by month, quarter, or year in a single call.
compare_periods PRO
Two periods side by side: counts, totals, averages, and percent deltas.
forecast_funding PRO
Project the next one to four quarters from trend plus quarterly seasonality.
get_valuation_trends PRO
Post-money valuation percentiles by quarter or year, with coverage so thin buckets show.
get_round_velocity PRO
Days between rounds, per company or aggregated by category, stage, or country.
get_cross_border_flows PRO
Which investor geographies fund which company geographies, as a crosstab.
M&A and consolidation
get_ma_activity PRO
M&A deals by category, geography, acquirer, acquirer type, size, or date.
category_consolidation_signals PRO
Which categories are consolidating, scored 0 to 100 with the buyers behind it.
get_acquirer_empire PRO
A buyer's acquired portfolio and deal velocity, with CVC arms folded into the parent.
suggest_acquirers PRO
Likely acquirers for a company, from category overlap, deal history, and graph adjacency.
Relationships and similarity
find_connections PRO
Paths between any two entities up to 6 hops, with a provable "no" and as-of-date queries.
find_similar_companies PRO
"Companies like Wiz, but only European Cloud Security." Semantic match plus hard filters.
get_company_partnerships PRO
Announced partnerships: partner, type (OEM, integration, channel, alliance), date, scope.
compare_partnership_overlap PRO
Shared partners between two companies, with mutual counts and type distributions.
find_partnership_cohort PRO
Companies that behave like a target, scored 0 to 100 on partner-ecosystem overlap.
Company signals
search_growth_signals PRO
Rank companies on a 0 to 100 score blending funding velocity, investor quality, and momentum.
get_company_layoffs PRO
Recorded layoff events: date, workforce impact, stage, reason, and departments hit.
get_company_shutdown PRO
Whether a company has ceased operations, with shutdown date and source.

Enterprise 1 tool

reconcile_companies ENT
Diff up to 100 company names from your CRM against The Signal in one call: match, known alias, fuzzy, or missing.

Troubleshooting

Verify your connection
Your MCP client should list The Signal's tools after sign-in (in Claude's connector menu, Cursor's MCP settings, or via claude mcp list in Claude Code). If you see them, you're connected. Access tokens last 24 hours.
Tools not loading?
Open a fresh client session. Your MCP client will automatically authenticate via your browser on first use.

Building software, not an agent?

MCP is for AI clients. If you are writing code that calls us directly, use the REST API.

Use MCP when

An AI client is doing the calling — Claude, Cursor, a Claude Code session, or your own agent. Tools, arguments and tier requirements are described in the protocol, so the model discovers what it can ask for.

Use the REST API when

Your own code is doing the calling — a scheduled job, a dashboard, an internal service. Bearer auth with a ros_live_ key, typed JSON, and an OpenAPI 3.1 spec you can generate a client from.

Same data either way

One dataset behind both, so the answer does not change with the transport. REST keys are a paid add-on on an existing plan, or included with Enterprise.

Read the API docs →

Ready to connect?

Start free. Screen companies and size up any category, 180 calls/day, no credit card. Upgrade when you need to know where the capital is heading and who is likely to buy next.

Start Free View Plans →