Reviewing trends in the Subrise OS Intelligence database
The interesting question every quarter isn’t how big is the dataset — it’s what are the same companies doing differently. 439 of the 443 unique Q1 companies (99.5%) are tracked into Q2 and form the apples-to-apples cohort below. Every signal that follows is a direct comparison on the same set of operators, holding the population constant.
Major Trends
- AI positioning: 50.8% → 55.6% of the cohort mentions AI publicly — a net +4.8 pp in one quarter.
- Median company size: 30 → 32 employees. 27 cohort companies up-shifted a size band, 19 down-shifted, 393 stayed put.
- Same delivery quadrant (API / SaaS / API+SaaS / Neither): 89.5% of the cohort.
- Compliance posture (ISO 27001, SOC 2): functionally unchanged.
The shape is consistent with last quarter’s read: AI is the fastest-moving public-facing signal in the dataset; everything below it moves on multi-year clocks.
AI is the live signal — and adoption rates split sharply by category
The category-level cut shows where the +4.8 pp net movement is concentrated:
| Type | Cohort AI Q1 | Cohort AI Q2 | Δ pp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk, Compliance & Operational Intelligence | 61.4% | 67.1% | +5.7 |
| Company & People Intelligence | 54.5% | 58.2% | +3.6 |
| Benchmark Intelligence | 45.2% | 54.8% | +9.5 |
| Market Intelligence | 49.5% | 54.3% | +4.9 |
| Location & Movement Intelligence | 45.5% | 47.7% | +2.3 |
Two things stand out. Benchmark Intelligence posted the largest single-quarter jump in the dataset (+9.5 pp). And Risk/Compliance/Operational already had the highest AI penetration in Q1 and pulled further ahead — the gap to Loc/Mov is now nearly 20 pp.
Loc/Mov is the laggard for two straight reads. That’s a category-level finding worth taking seriously: weather/geo/mobility operators are not racing to AI positioning at the same pace as the rest of the universe.
Subcategory leaders on AI
The level-2 cut is where the actionable peer-set comparisons live. Cohort AI rate, Q1 → Q2:
Biggest gains in AI adoption (cohort, Q1 → Q2):
| Subcategory | Q1 % | Q2 % | Δ pp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valuation Benchmarks | 41.7% | 58.3% | +16.7 |
| Cost & Pricing Benchmarks | 75.0% | 87.5% | +12.5 |
| Compliance & Audit Intelligence | 55.6% | 66.7% | +11.1 |
| Market Sizing & Share Intelligence | 37.5% | 46.9% | +9.4 |
| Company Data | 51.4% | 59.5% | +8.1 |
| Risk, Credit & Fraud Intelligence | 56.0% | 64.0% | +8.0 |
| Geospatial & Map-Based Intelligence | 43.6% | 51.3% | +7.7 |
Static or near-static subcategories: Weather Intelligence (30%), Workforce & Talent Intelligence (53.8%), Routing/Mobility/Flow (50%), Custom Research & Survey (75%), Competitive Landscape Tracking (64.3%), Event/Location/Sensor (54.5%) — all unchanged quarter-over-quarter.
A pattern holds. Subcategories that sell distilled interpretation over noisy inputs lead AI adoption — Risk/Fraud, Compliance/Audit, Market Sizing, Company Data, Valuation Benchmarks. Subcategories that sell well-bounded, high-trust deliverables move slowest or not at all — Weather, Routing/Mobility, Workforce/Talent. Buyers in the latter group set a higher bar for “AI-generated”; the operators have read that signal.
Marketing and product surfaces — what’s moving, what isn’t
Aggregate stability with active per-company churn underneath. Cohort feature movement, ranked by Δ pp:
| Signal | Q1 % | Q2 % | Δ pp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knowledge Base / Documentation | 37.6% | 41.0% | +3.4 |
| Industry Pages | 32.3% | 34.4% | +2.1 |
| Platform / Product Overview | 76.5% | 78.4% | +1.8 |
| Webinars / Virtual Events | 14.8% | 16.2% | +1.4 |
| Interactive Product Tour | 3.6% | 4.8% | +1.1 |
| Chatbot / Live Assistance | 3.6% | 4.6% | +0.9 |
| Free Downloads / Resources | 11.6% | 12.5% | +0.9 |
| API Available | 25.7% | 26.2% | +0.5 |
| Blog | 48.3% | 48.5% | +0.2 |
| Free Plan | 8.7% | 8.0% | −0.7 |
| Self-Registration | 16.6% | 15.5% | −1.1 |
| Newsletter | 32.8% | 31.4% | −1.4 |
| Application Login | 64.0% | 62.6% | −1.4 |
Knowledge Base / Documentation is the most consistent feature signal in the dataset — +3.4 pp this quarter, +3.2 pp last quarter. Newsletter and Self-Registration declined for the second straight quarter — both signals are running the same direction: operators are spending less on owned-audience capture and more on documented product surface.
Knowledge Base by category — Risk/Compliance is the outlier
The cohort-wide Knowledge Base story has a category-level twist: not every type is moving in the same direction.
| Type | Q1 % | Q2 % | Δ pp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company & People Intelligence | 41.8% | 49.1% | +7.3 |
| Market Intelligence | 34.8% | 40.8% | +6.0 |
| Benchmark Intelligence | 38.1% | 40.5% | +2.4 |
| Location & Movement Intelligence | 38.6% | 38.6% | 0.0 |
| Risk, Compliance & Operational Intelligence | 40.0% | 38.6% | −1.4 |
Risk/Compliance/Operational is the only category where Knowledge Base presence declined. The same category leading AI adoption is pulling back on documented product surface — possibly gating more behind sales motion as buyers in regulated verticals require it. Co/People and Market operators are doing the opposite: pushing more product detail external.
Where the cohort is growing in headcount
27 cohort companies up-shifted a size band; 19 down-shifted. Up-shift concentration by type:
| Type | Up-shifters | Of base | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company & People Intelligence | 6 | 55 | 10.9% |
| Risk, Compliance & Operational Intelligence | 5 | 70 | 7.1% |
| Market Intelligence | 12 | 184 | 6.5% |
| Location & Movement Intelligence | 3 | 88 | 3.4% |
| Benchmark Intelligence | 1 | 42 | 2.4% |
Co/People and Risk/Compliance lead growth in the cohort by a meaningful margin. Benchmark Intelligence — despite its strong AI-positioning gains — is the slowest-growing category by headcount. Two interpretations sit side by side: Benchmark operators are repositioning faster than they’re hiring, or AI positioning in Benchmark categories is partially a substitute for headcount expansion.
What this means for Data Business Operators
- AI positioning is a category-level decision, not a market-level one. Risk/Compliance and Benchmark cohorts are pulling ahead at very different paces from Loc/Mov, which has barely moved for two straight quarters.
- Knowledge Base / Documentation is the most consistent forward-pulling feature signal in the dataset. If you’re below 40% on documented product surface, you’re now below cohort median in every category except Risk/Compliance.
- Newsletter and Self-Registration decline is sustained, not noise. Two straight quarters of net contraction. The owned-audience-capture playbook is losing operator support.
- Co/People and Risk/Compliance are out-growing the rest of the cohort by headcount. The category-level shape isn’t symmetric.
- Compliance and delivery posture move on multi-year clocks. ISO/SOC mention rates and the API/SaaS quadrant moved <2 pp. Don’t over-index on quarterly movement here.
Source: Subrise Intelligence — Organizations dataset, Q1 2026 (Dec 11, 2025) and Q2 2026 (May 1, 2026). Same-cohort analysis covers the 439 of 443 unique Q1 companies that remain in Q2.
Find your peer set → gosubrise.com/data-business