Global company and office insights

What is Rhetorik?

Rhetorik is a B2B data company that builds detailed views of businesses and the people who work at them. The company has operated for decades out of the UK and Canada, and was acquired by Lightcast in 2025. Their core products are a global company database with technographic detail down to specific hardware, software, and cloud services in use, and ProfileFinder, a database of professional profiles built from public web sources.

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What academic researchers should know about Rhetorik company and office data

On Dewey, Rhetorik publishes two U.S. datasets: company data and office data. The company file covers firm level attributes including industry, size, revenue, and technology footprint, with technographic detail identifying which hardware, software, and cloud services each business actually uses. The office file extends those views to individual physical locations, so researchers can study firms that operate from multiple sites at the building level rather than only at the corporate parent. Rhetorik's database is built and validated through a multisource approach including telephone research, targeted data mining, external data vendors, and national registries, with verification and cleaning applied before each record is published. Coverage runs back to 2010.

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Why academic researchers choose Rhetorik on Dewey

Rhetorik solves a persistent problem for researchers studying firms and technology: most existing data either covers public companies at the corporate parent level (Compustat) or relies on coarse proxies like IT spending in filings or technology mentions in job postings. Rhetorik fills in the picture for private companies, multisite organizations, and the actual technology stack inside each firm, with the office file letting researchers localize firm activity to specific physical sites. On Dewey, Rhetorik pairs naturally with LinkUp job postings for workforce signals, ATTOM property records for the buildings those offices sit in, and SafeGraph or Advan Research for the foot traffic and consumer activity around those locations. Rhetorik was built for commercial sales and marketing teams, and Dewey is how academics get their hands on it.

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Rhetorik academic research ideas and use cases

Technology adoption and diffusion. The company file's technographic detail lets researchers study which firms adopt which technologies and when, going beyond IT spending proxies or job posting mentions. Studies can model how cloud platforms, AI tools, security software, or ERP systems spread across industries and regions, identify peer effects in adoption, and connect technology footprint to firm outcomes. Pair with People DataLabs to track how headcount in technical functions shifts after adoption, IPqwery for the patent activity that often precedes a transition, and LinkUp for the hiring signals that follow.

Multisite firms and the geography of business. The office file lets researchers move past the corporate parent and study firms at the level of individual physical locations. That opens up research on branch openings and closings, entry into new metros, the geography of expansion after mergers or funding rounds, and how multisite firms allocate functions across cities. ATTOM and REsimplifi let researchers connect each office to the building and lease underneath it, and Veridion provides firmographic context for global parents with U.S. subsidiaries.

Firm dynamics and industry concentration. The company file makes it straightforward to build firm level datasets for industries that lack good Compustat coverage, especially private companies, startups, and the long tail of small businesses. Researchers studying entry, exit, mergers, and concentration can layer BrightQuery for private company financials, the WARN Database for layoff and shutdown signals, and LobbyingData for the policy footprint of dominant firms.

Productivity, IT spillovers, and management research. Studies linking IT investment to productivity have struggled for decades with the lack of consistent firm level technology data. Rhetorik's technographic classification supports cleaner designs for testing the productivity payoff of cloud migration, AI deployment, and modern data stack adoption. Pair with WageScape to control for changing wage levels by occupation and location, Revelio Labs to track headcount and tenure, and BrightQuery for the financial outcomes those investments are supposed to produce.

Marketing, sales, and B2B strategy research. Marketing, strategy, and information systems researchers studying B2B buyer behavior, vendor stickiness, software switching costs, or partner ecosystems can use Rhetorik to identify and segment populations of firms by their actual technology footprint. Pair with Similarweb to see how those firms behave on the open web and People Data Labs for tenure and churn patterns inside vendor accounts.

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