Glossary
Terms used across the site, from the category's own vocabulary (refounding, Creation, forward-deployed engineer) to the research's evidence and transaction labels.
AI-native holding company / AI holdco. A company that owns operating businesses and rebuilds their operations with software and AI. Used loosely in the press for roll-ups, permanent holding companies and sponsor-built platforms alike; this site separates them under models.
Alternative business structure (ABS). A licensing regime (notably Arizona) that allows non-lawyer ownership of a law firm. Eudia Counsel is an Arizona ABS firm.
Announced / signed / closed. Stages of a transaction. Announced means publicly stated; signed means an agreement exists; closed means ownership has transferred. The site labels each event and never counts announced deals as completed.
Atlas, Nexus, Enterprise Brain, Mosaic, Forge. Platform names used by Sequence, Long Lake, Eudia, Percepta and Shield respectively. Company descriptions, not independently assessed products.
Claim. The unit of evidence on this site: one statement, one evidence label, one or more sources, and a role for each organization mentioned (subject, investor, acquirer, acquired, partner, reporter, context).
Committed capital. Equity investors have agreed to provide; not the same as cash drawn or invested.
Company reported / investor reported / independent reporting. Evidence labels describing who made a statement. See methodology.
Creation. General Catalyst's strategy for incubating and funding companies, including acquisition-led transformation. $1.5bn of Fund XII is allocated to it.
Denominator. The population a number refers to. "70 businesses owned", "almost 30 firms" and "19 partner companies" can all be true of the same group at once.
Enterprise value (EV). Equity value plus net debt. Baldwin's ~$7.7bn EV comprises ~$4.6bn equity and ~$3.1bn net debt.
Forward-deployed engineer (FDE). An engineer embedded in an operating business who builds and adapts tools on site and feeds what is learned back into a shared platform.
Go-private. Acquisition of a listed company by a private owner; Baldwin (by Sequence/DFO) and Amex GBT (by Long Lake) are the two in the research, both announced rather than completed at the cutoff.
Lead. A source captured only as a title and URL from search results. Listed separately in News & Ideas; never evidence.
Permanent capital / permanent holding company. A stated intention to own businesses indefinitely. On this site it is always recorded as a company statement, not a legal fact.
Refounding. Sequence's term for combining ownership with embedded engineering to rebuild how an existing business operates.
Roll-up. Acquiring many small firms in one industry to form a larger platform. The traditional version relies on scale and cost; the AI-enabled version claims automation as the source of margin.
Rule of 40 / Rule of 60. Growth rate plus margin. Rule of 40 is a software benchmark; Rule of 60 is General Catalyst's stated ambition for AI-enabled services businesses — a target, not a result.
Run rate / ARR. Annualised revenue from a recent period. Not the same as recognised annual revenue.
Superseded. A claim replaced by a later or more precise one. Superseded claims stay reachable from the claim that replaced them.
Testimonial. A customer or partner statement published by the company itself. Labelled distinctly from company-reported results.
Tuck-in. A small acquisition folded into an existing operating business rather than run separately.