4 weeks. 3 deals. How Dun & Bradstreet aims to be the AI industry’s linchpin (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) —
Over a span of just a few weeks, Dun & Bradstreet rattled off three major artificial intelligence-forward partnerships, aligning itself with Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI.
The century-old Jacksonville-based firm is engaged in an evolution that is recasting its marketplace reputation — seeking to embed its vast business data into the very systems powering the rise of enterprise AI.
In essence, Dun & Bradstreet aims to become what one executive called the “context window” those systems depend on. That’s happening internally and externally.
Since Clearlake Capital Group completed its $7.7 billion purchase of the local company, Dun & Bradstreet has gone full tilt on being AI first, Chief Data and Analytics Officer Gary Kotovets said.
“They want to be that core architecture engine, so to speak,” Kotovets said of each of the company’s Dun & Bradstreet is collaborating with. “That AI engine that sits in the middle of that company.”
Each collaboration operates slightly differently, but the premise is the same: Users can, in just a few clicks, gain access to Dun & Bradstreet’s data. It illustrates a critical shift in the company’s consumer integration strategy underlying it all: Humans aren’t its only end users anymore. Agents are too.
The company is in the process of a deliberate re-plumbing of how its data is accessed and used. Instead of routing customers through traditional methods and embedded datasets in enterprise systems, Dun & Bradstreet is opening new pathways into these AI-native environments.
Its most recent collaboration with OpenAI, announced Wednesday, for instance, allows developers to pull data directly into their code and agents they’re building.
Large language models continue to take shape globally, and companies are increasingly looking toward agentic capabilities, describing systems capable of autonomous decision-making, building on the foundation of generative AI.
It’s a space analysts expect to reshape enterprise operations. Research from McKinsey & Company calls it the “next frontier” for business automation, a step beyond chatbots and copilots.
“I spoke to hundreds of CIOs in the last seven eight months,” Kotovets said. “The No. 1 problem that everybody has is, ‘I have to get my data right before I build anything agentically.’”
That layer is where Dun & Bradstreet is focused on — a vital middle layer that feeds these systems reliable data.
Last year, the company unveiled a suite of enterprise tools designed to help companies harness the power of AI through legally compliant data, dubbed D&B.AI.
It brings in a verification layer critical to Dun & Bradstreet’s evolution. Kotovets called them “truth agents” that can be embedded into any workflow. More tools like those are expected to be announced in the coming months, including something similar with finance analytics, he said.
This flurry of partnerships on one hand signals urgency. Dun & Bradstreet is all-in on being the provider of relevant, authenticated, reliable data that AI models run on.
On the other, it’s making a long-term bet on the value of enterprise AI. The company is positioning itself as a constant in this rapidly shifting landscape, arguing that as interfaces and platforms evolve, the need for clean data will only grow.
Its “context window” is an extension of what Dun & Bradstreet is already known for.
“Just like humans have been relying on us before,” Kotovets said. “Now agents will rely on us.”