Trace Financings

This primitive turns a funding question into a structured round set with explicit value disclosure status, investor mix, and document provenance.

Use When

• the question is fundamentally about funding rounds, not drug programs or trials
• a workflow needs capital activity for a company, an indication, a mechanism, a target, or an investor
• you need round-level evidence (date, type, value, recipient, investors, supporting documents) before reasoning about runway, momentum, or investor signal

Core Tools

• get_financings for structured cross-company filters (recipient, investor, financing_type, value range, date window, current-only, sort by total_value)
• search_entities("financing", ...) for natural-language financing discovery and fuzzy phrasings the structured params cannot express
• research_entity(name, "company", aspects=["financings"]) for rounds where a named company was the recipient
• research_entity(name, "company", aspects=["investments"]) for rounds where a named company was an investor (VCs, corporate venture arms, strategic investors)
• get_financings with a recent date window (newest first) for the recency feed of newly announced rounds -- financing recency is not in get_recent_events
• read_document against the round's document_ids to back any material claim

Tool Choice

• if the agent already knows the named company, use research_entity aspects -- one credit, one shape, no resolution overhead
• if the question is structured ("Series B+ rounds in NSCLC since 2024", "rounds led by ARCH or Founders Fund", "rounds over $100M"), use get_financings with typed filters
• if the question is fuzzy or compositional ("late-stage immuno-oncology momentum", "biotech IPOs this year"), use search_entities("financing", ...) and let the natural-language path translate it
• for "what's new this week" feed-style questions, use get_financings with a recent date window; financing recency lives in get_financings, not get_recent_events (which covers only fda/trial/press)

Output Contract

Return a structured round list with:

• round_id (the prefixed fin_ identifier)
• financing_date
• financing_type (canonical: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, Series D+, IPO, Post-IPO Equity, Debt Financing, Grant, Strategic Investment, Acquisition, Other Financing)
• recipient companies as {id, name} pairs
• investor companies as {id, name} pairs
• total_value_usd and value_status ("confirmed" or "unconfirmed")
• supporting document_ids for chaining into read_document
• evidence rating per material claim
• explicit gaps for unconfirmed rounds, missing investors, or contradictory sources

Aggregation Shortcut

If the question is "totals, distributions, or rankings across a financing slice," prefer aggregate_records(entity_type="financing", ...) and use get_financings to fetch round-level evidence for the claims you cite. median/avg aggregations on total_value already separate the confirmed-value denominator via _input_count.

Quality Bar

• never present total_value_usd: null as "the round was undisclosed" -- the correct phrasing is "Maven's data does not have the value." The round may have a publicly disclosed amount Maven has not captured. Verify externally if the value is critical.
• when reporting aggregate totals (sum raised, average round size), separate the confirmed-value slice from the unconfirmed slice rather than treating null as zero
• treat the canonical financing types as a closed enum; if a caller-supplied type alias resolves to a canonical value, surface the resolution explicitly so downstream readers see the normalization
• for round-level claims (lead investor, oversubscription, valuation, post-money), require document evidence from read_document; the structured row alone is metadata, not citable evidence
• the investor list may include thin-profile stub companies for previously-unknown investors -- these resolve via research_entity but with limited data; preserve the asymmetry rather than smoothing it over
• distinguish get_financings (private/round-level capital activity) from get_financials (public-market financial statements: revenue, EBITDA, market cap, cash). Both can apply to the same company; do not conflate them
• when sorting by deal size, use sort_by="total_value" and note that unconfirmed rounds are ordered last

Fallback Rules

• if a recipient or investor name does not resolve, the response surfaces ranked candidates under error.alternatives keyed per input. Retry with a candidate name in one round-trip rather than guessing
• if a financing_type value does not match the canonical enum, the response either auto-corrects (case-fold or alias) and surfaces the correction, or rejects with the canonical list under error.alternatives. Use the canonical list, do not invent new types
• if get_financings returns zero rows for a structured query, retry with search_entities("financing", "<the same intent in natural language>") before concluding no rounds exist
• for indication / mechanism / target ontology axes, the recipient-side filters live on search_entities("financing", ...); the structured get_financings surface does not expose them as typed params
• if host web fetch is blocked, prefer search_documents plus read_document against the round's document_ids rather than retrying blocked external fetches
• if a financing question remains blocked after the above, state the gap explicitly in the output rather than substituting a weaker proxy answer