Inferal Company Intelligence Ontology

The Inferal Company Intelligence Ontology defines RDF terms for sourced, time-bounded, confidence-aware company information. It joins Crunchbase-like entity and event intelligence with XBRL-like reporting context while preserving source evidence and uncertainty.

This is an unofficial 0.1 Editor's Draft maintained in the Inferal ontology repository.

Feedback should be sent to contact@inferal.com.

Conforming data graphs that use this module SHOULD validate against shapes.ttl for the closed-world requirements documented here. OWL entailment alone is not sufficient to enforce required source, confidence, source timing, unit, or reporting-context fields.

Namespaces

Prefix	IRI
`ci`	`https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/company-intelligence/`
`cmi`	`https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/commercial-intelligence/`
`conf`	`https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/confidence/`
`loc`	`https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/localization/`
`prov`	`http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#`
`skos`	`http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#`
`schema`	`https://schema.org/`

Scope

The module treats a company profile as a projection over assertions, observations, events, relationships, and identifiers. It distinguishes legal entities from operating entities, brands, reporting entities, and issuers. It distinguishes events from resulting states, and it treats financial facts as contextual observations rather than simple attribute triples. Product, service, customer, activity, and use-case semantics are imported from the Inferal Commercial Intelligence module.

It directly imports the Inferal Commercial Intelligence module, PROV-O [[PROV-O]], SKOS [[SKOS-REFERENCE]], W3C ORG [[VOCAB-ORG]], Schema.org, the Inferal confidence module, and the Inferal Localization module [[INFERAL-LOCALIZATION]]. QUDT [[QUDT]], GLEIF RDF [[GLEIF-RDF]], and selected FIBO [[FIBO]] modules are vendored as mapping snapshots rather than import-followed dependencies. XBRL OIM [[XBRL-OIM]], OWL-Time [[OWL-TIME]], and BODS [[BODS]] are referenced modeling standards rather than RDF imports.

Competency Questions

Which identifiers support resolving an entity across LEI, CIK, ticker, and source-system records?
Which investors participated in a funding round, and which source reported the participation?
Through Commercial Intelligence, what does the company do, what does it sell, which product/service categories describe the offering, who buys it, and which source supports named-customer evidence?
What confidence and source support a headcount, valuation, or revenue value?
Are two financial facts comparable by reporting entity, concept, period, unit, and accounting basis?
Which ownership or control relationships are valid as of a date?
What relationships resulted from an acquisition event?
Which sourced claims conflict, and which assertion is currently canonical?

Term Index

Entity, Source, And Identity Terms

Term	Kind	Normative role
`ci:EconomicEntity`	Class	Entity that can participate in economic activity or be the subject of company-intelligence claims.
`ci:LegalEntity`	Class	Economic entity recognized by a jurisdiction or legal arrangement.
`ci:OperatingEntity`	Class	Entity viewed as the operator of a business, brand, facility, market activity, or commercial surface.
`ci:ReportingEntity`	Class	Entity used as the reporting dimension for a financial report or metric observation.
`ci:Issuer`	Class	Reporting entity that issues securities, filings, or regulated capital-market disclosures.
`ci:Brand`	Class	Market-facing name or identity under which offerings may be sold or presented.
`ci:Jurisdiction`	Class	Legal or administrative jurisdiction relevant to formation, registration, regulation, taxation, or reporting.
`ci:IdentifierScheme`	Class	Authority and interpretation scheme for values such as LEI, CIK, ticker, DUNS, or vendor keys.
`ci:EntityIdentifier`	Class	Identifier assignment linking an economic entity to a value in an identifier scheme.
`ci:Source`	Class	Document, dataset, API response, filing, analyst note, extraction output, or other evidence source.
`ci:SourceDocument`	Class	Source that is a document, including filings, press releases, pages, prospectuses, and reports.
`ci:DatasetSource`	Class	Source that is a structured dataset, database extract, API export, or vendor dataset.
`ci:Filing`	Class	Source document filed with a regulator, exchange, company registry, or similar authority.

Assertion, Observation, And Financial Terms

Term	Kind	Normative role
`ci:Assertion`	Class	Sourced claim about an entity, event, relationship, identity, role, classification, observation, or financial fact.
`ci:EntityIdentityAssertion`	Class	Claim that two identifiers or resources refer to the same, similar, related, or possibly matching entity.
`ci:RelationshipAssertion`	Class	Sourced assertion about a qualified relationship between entities, people, brands, products, events, or sources.
`ci:Observation`	Class	Sourced assertion whose core content is a value observed for an entity, metric, concept, or period.
`ci:MetricObservation`	Class	Operational, market, product, workforce, traffic, customer, valuation, or other non-XBRL metric observation.
`ci:FinancialFact`	Class	XBRL-facing observation with reporting entity, period, unit, decimals, accounting basis, concept, and source context.
`ci:ReportingContext`	Class	Context for a financial fact or metric, including entity, period or instant, unit, scenario, basis, and dimensions.
`ci:FinancialConcept`	Class	Concept measured by a financial fact, often mapped to a US-GAAP, IFRS, DEI, or extension concept.
`ci:MetricConcept`	Class	Concept measured by an operational or market metric observation.
`ci:Classification`	Class	Sourced classification of an entity, product, market, metric, source, or event.
`ci:ConflictSet`	Class	Set of assertions that cannot all be accepted under the same scope.

Event, Relationship, And Role Terms

Term	Kind	Normative role
`ci:Event`	Class	Temporally located business event that can create, change, or terminate entity states or relationships.
`ci:FormationEvent`	Class	Event in which an entity is founded, incorporated, registered, organized, or otherwise formed.
`ci:FundingEvent`	Class	Event in which an entity receives capital through equity, debt, notes, SAFE, grant, secondary sale, PIPE, IPO-related financing, or similar instruments.
`ci:AcquisitionEvent`	Class	Event in which one entity acquires another entity, business, product, asset group, or controlling interest.
`ci:MergerEvent`	Class	Event in which two or more entities combine.
`ci:IPOEvent`	Class	Funding and listing event in which an issuer offers securities publicly for the first time.
`ci:NameChangeEvent`	Class	Event in which an entity, brand, or product changes a legal, registered, trade, or display name.
`ci:Relationship`	Class	Qualified, optionally time-bounded relation modeled as a resource so source, confidence, and role details can attach.
`ci:OwnershipRelationship`	Class	Relationship in which an entity, person, fund, or vehicle owns an economic, voting, beneficial, membership, or asset interest.
`ci:ControlRelationship`	Class	Relationship in which one party can direct, consolidate, manage, appoint, veto, or otherwise control another.
`ci:Role`	Class	Time-bounded relationship in which a person or organization serves a function for an entity, event, product, fund, or relationship.
`ci:FounderRole`	Class	Role asserting founder, co-founder, or material formation participation.
`ci:ExecutiveRole`	Class	Executive, officer, manager, or comparable leadership role.
`ci:BoardRole`	Class	Board, director, observer, committee, or governance role.
`ci:InvestmentParticipation`	Class	Relationship linking an investor to a funding event, optionally with lead status, amount, instrument, and source.
`ci:Instrument`	Class	Financial, legal, or funding instrument such as common stock, preferred stock, note, SAFE, warrant, grant, loan, or derivative.

Controlled Vocabulary And Reuse Terms

Term	Kind	Normative role
`ci:Currency`	Class	Monetary unit used for amounts, valuations, financial facts, or funding events.
`ci:Unit`	Class	Unit of measure for a metric, financial fact, amount, or reporting context.
`ci:AccountingBasis`	Class	Accounting basis, standard, or taxonomy context such as US GAAP, IFRS, local GAAP, management reporting, pro forma, or estimated reporting.
`ci:AssertionKindScheme`	SKOS concept scheme	Controlled concept scheme for broad assertion kinds.
`ci:StatedClaim`, `ci:InferredClaim`, `ci:EstimatedClaim`, `ci:NormalizedClaim`	SKOS concepts	Built-in assertion-kind concepts for stated, inferred, estimated, and normalized claims.
`ci:LEIScheme`, `ci:CIKScheme`, `ci:TickerScheme`, `ci:OpenCorporatesScheme`	Individuals	Built-in identifier schemes for common company identifiers.
`ci:USD`, `ci:shares`, `ci:employees`	Individuals	Convenience unit individuals for examples and local data; production data SHOULD prefer ISO 4217, XBRL, or QUDT IRIs when available.
`ci:USGAAP`, `ci:IFRS`	Individuals	Accounting basis individuals for common reporting standards.
`ci:SeriesA`, `ci:controlsThroughConsolidation`	SKOS concepts	Example concepts for venture financing stage and accounting-consolidation control mechanism.
`ci:ExternalVocabularyUse`	Class	Record explaining an external ontology, standard, code list, or vocabulary considered or used by the module.
`ci:PROVReuse`, `ci:SKOSReuse`, `ci:ConfidenceReuse`, `ci:ORGProfileCandidate`	Individuals	Reuse decisions for directly imported provenance, classification, confidence, and organization vocabularies.
`ci:FIBOMappingCandidate`, `ci:XBRLOIMMappingCandidate`, `ci:GLEIFMappingCandidate`, `ci:BODSMappingCandidate`, `ci:QUDTMappingCandidate`	Individuals	Mapping or reference decisions for broader financial, legal entity, ownership, and unit standards.

Property Groups

The property vocabulary is intentionally broad because company intelligence merges identity, events, sourced claims, relationships, metrics, and XBRL-facing facts. Properties whose names differ from class names only by case are listed as code terms rather than ReSpec definitions.

Group	Terms	Role
Assertion projection	`ci:assertedSubject`, `ci:assertedPredicate`, `ci:assertedObject`, `ci:assertedValue`, `ci:assertionKind`, `ci:source`, `ci:confidenceAssessment`	Represent the statement-like content, kind, evidence, and confidence of sourced assertions.
Source and time	`prov:generatedAtTime`, `prov:used`, `prov:endedAtTime`, `ci:observedOn`, `ci:validFrom`, `ci:validThrough`	Record source generation, retrieval activity, observation, and validity timing without assuming missing dates are false.
Identity	`ci:identifierScheme`, `ci:identifierValue`, `ci:identifiesEntity`, `ci:registeredInJurisdiction`, `ci:assignedBy`, `ci:matchSubject`, `ci:matchTarget`, `ci:matchBasis`	Connect entities to identifiers and identity-resolution evidence.
Brands and commercial import	`ci:operatesBrand`; imported `cmi:sellsOffering`, `cmi:primaryActivity`, `cmi:servesCustomerSegment`, `cmi:CustomerRelationship`	Keep company-owned brand relations separate from the commercial-intelligence offering/customer model.
Qualified relationships	`ci:relationshipSubject`, `ci:relationshipObject`, `ci:relationshipType`, `ci:percentOwned`, `ci:votingPercent`, `ci:controlMechanism`	Represent ownership, control, role, investment, and other state-like relations as first-class resources.
Roles and investments	`ci:roleHolder`, `ci:roleInEntity`, `ci:roleTitle`, `ci:participatesIn`, `ci:investor`, `ci:fundingEvent`, `ci:leadInvestor`	Attach people, organizations, investors, and role metadata to events and relationships.
Amounts and instruments	`ci:amount`, `ci:currency`, `ci:preMoneyValuation`, `ci:postMoneyValuation`, `ci:instrument`	Record monetary values, valuations, and instrument details for financing and transaction facts.
Events	`ci:eventDate`, `ci:eventSubject`, `ci:eventParticipant`, `ci:acquiringEntity`, `ci:acquiredEntity`, `ci:resultingRelationship`	Describe temporally located changes and the state-like relationships they create.
Financial and metric facts	`ci:financialConcept`, `ci:metricConcept`, `ci:reportedValue`, `ci:metricValue`, `ci:unit`, `ci:decimals`, `ci:reportingContext`, `ci:reportingEntity`, `ci:periodStart`, `ci:periodEnd`, `ci:instantDate`, `ci:accountingBasis`, `ci:reportedIn`, `ci:xbrlConceptName`, `ci:xbrlTaxonomy`, `ci:restatementStatus`	Bridge operational metrics and XBRL-facing financial facts to source filings, reporting context, units, and concepts.
Classification and external vocabulary review	`ci:classificationTarget`, `ci:classifiedAs`, `ci:vocabulary`, `ci:mappingConfidence`, `ci:mappingRationale`, `ci:externalVocabularyUse`, `ci:usesVocabularyWithCaution`	Record classifications and decisions about direct import, profiling, weak mapping, or caution for external vocabularies.
Conflict handling	`ci:conflictingAssertion`, `ci:canonicalAssertion`	Group incompatible sourced claims and identify the assertion selected as canonical for a profile or application scope.

Model

Entity Projections

Company intelligence data sources frequently conflate legal, operating, reporting, issuing, and brand identities. This ontology keeps those views separate. A resource MAY be typed as multiple entity views when a source or reconciliation process supports the merge, but producers SHOULD NOT collapse a legal entity, operating entity, brand, and reporting entity merely because they share a display name.

Sourced Assertions

Assertions are evidence-bearing resources. They can project a simple statement through ci:assertedSubject, ci:assertedPredicate, and either ci:assertedObject or ci:assertedValue, but the assertion resource remains available for source, confidence, kind, validity, conflict, and canonicalization metadata.

SHACL validates important closed-world requirements, such as a source on observations and relationship assertions. OWL entailment alone does not reject a missing source, a missing reporting context, or two incompatible values for the same metric.

Source publication or snapshot generation time SHOULD use prov:generatedAtTime on the source entity. Retrieval SHOULD be modeled as a prov:Activity that prov:used the source and records prov:endedAtTime. Local date properties in this module are reserved for observation dates and validity intervals. Those properties declare loc:defaultFrame loc:UTCTimeline, so ordinary xsd:date values stay compact while remaining explicit about their temporal frame.

When a date is disputed, estimated, range-valued, or needs separate source and confidence metadata, producers SHOULD mint a loc:Locus and one or more loc:Localization resources instead of adding another company-specific date claim term.

Events Versus Resulting States

A funding round, acquisition, merger, IPO, formation, or name change is modeled as an event. Ownership, control, role, and investment participation are modeled as relationships that may be created, updated, or terminated by events. This separation lets analysts ask both "what happened?" and "what was true as of a date?"

Financial Facts And Metrics

ci:FinancialFact is an RDF-facing bridge to the XBRL OIM idea of a fact: concept, entity, period or instant, unit, decimals, and reporting context. It does not replace XBRL processors, taxonomy validation, dimensional validation, calculation linkbases, or filing conformance. ci:MetricObservation covers analyst-facing operational facts such as headcount, ARR, GMV, customer count, valuation, web traffic, or product usage metrics.

Commercial Intelligence Boundary

Product/service offerings, use cases, customer segments, revenue models, customer relationships, and product/service category concepts are imported from the Commercial Intelligence module. Company Intelligence owns company, source, assertion, event, identity, relationship, and financial-reporting semantics; Commercial Intelligence owns what the business sells, what it does, and who buys it.

Examples

@prefix ci: <https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/company-intelligence/> .
@prefix ex: <https://example.com/company-intelligence/> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:series-a-acme
    a ci:FundingEvent ;
    ci:eventDate "2025-02-20"^^xsd:date ;
    ci:eventSubject ex:acme-robotics ;
    ci:amount "12000000"^^xsd:decimal ;
    ci:currency ci:USD .

ex:blue-series-a-participation
    a ci:InvestmentParticipation ;
    ci:relationshipSubject ex:blue-ventures ;
    ci:relationshipObject ex:acme-robotics ;
    ci:investor ex:blue-ventures ;
    ci:fundingEvent ex:series-a-acme ;
    ci:leadInvestor true .

@prefix ci: <https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/company-intelligence/> .
@prefix cmi: <https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/commercial-intelligence/> .
@prefix ex: <https://example.com/company-intelligence/> .

ex:acme-robotics
    a ci:OperatingEntity ;
    cmi:primaryActivity ex:warehouse-automation ;
    cmi:sellsOffering ex:acme-autonomy-platform ;
    cmi:servesCustomerSegment ex:enterprise-logistics-operators .

ex:acme-autonomy-platform
    a cmi:Product ;
    cmi:offeringCategory cmi:RoboticsOffering, cmi:AIEnabledOffering ;
    cmi:targetCustomerSegment ex:enterprise-logistics-operators ;
    cmi:useCase ex:pallet-movement-automation ;
    cmi:revenueModel ex:robotics-as-a-service .

ex:northwind-acme-customer-relationship
    a cmi:CustomerRelationship ;
    cmi:seller ex:acme-robotics ;
    cmi:customer ex:northwind-logistics ;
    cmi:purchasedOffering ex:acme-autonomy-platform ;
    cmi:source ex:acme-customer-case-study .

@prefix ci: <https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/company-intelligence/> .
@prefix ex: <https://example.com/company-intelligence/> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:publicco-revenue-fy2025
    a ci:FinancialFact ;
    ci:financialConcept ex:revenue-concept ;
    ci:reportedValue "1842000000"^^xsd:decimal ;
    ci:unit ci:USD ;
    ci:decimals "-3"^^xsd:integer ;
    ci:reportingContext ex:fy2025-context ;
    ci:reportedIn ex:publicco-2025-10k .

@prefix ci: <https://ontology.inferal.com/modules/company-intelligence/> .
@prefix ex: <https://example.com/company-intelligence/> .

ex:valuation-conflict
    a ci:ConflictSet ;
    ci:conflictingAssertion ex:acme-valuation-vendor, ex:acme-valuation-analyst ;
    ci:canonicalAssertion ex:acme-valuation-analyst .

Reuse Decisions

The module records reuse decisions as ci:ExternalVocabularyUse resources. PROV-O, SKOS, ORG, Schema.org, and the Inferal confidence module are imported directly. QUDT, GLEIF, and selected FIBO modules are vendored for repeatable mapping review without forcing transitive import closure. XBRL OIM, OWL-Time, and BODS are cited because they are necessary modeling references, but they are not imported as RDF vocabularies here.