SEC Form D search: track private fundraising for free

What is a Form D filing?

A Form D is the notice a private company must file with the SEC within 15 days of first selling securities in an exempt offering — the paperwork behind most US venture rounds raised under Regulation D. According to SEC rules, it discloses the amount raised, the offering date, and the issuer's industry group, but never the investor names. In our data, Form D is the only free, official, machine-readable trace of private fundraising in the US: 5,256 filings matching a single common term landed between 2026-01-01 and 2026-07-24 alone, according to our EDGAR full-text probe. What that makes it good for:

• Confirming that a specific private company raised, and when.
• Sector-level scanning: which industry groups are raising right now.
• A join key — every filing carries the issuer's CIK for the rest of EDGAR.

How do you search Form D filings for free?

A Form D search is a single GET against the EDGAR full-text endpoint with forms=D — no API key, no signup. We tested the endpoint on 2026-07-24; in our data the date-windowed query below returned 5,256 hits for 2026 alone. What each response row carries:

• The issuer's CIK — the join key into the rest of EDGAR.
• The form type and exact filing date.
• The entity name as filed, matchable against registry records.

The two-step pattern:

# 1. Find Form D filings mentioning a company
curl -H "User-Agent: your-name research you@example.com" \
  "https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=%22Stripe%22&forms=D"
# 2. Narrow by date window
curl -H "User-Agent: your-name research you@example.com" \
  "https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=%22offering%22&forms=D&startdt=2026-01-01&enddt=2026-07-24"

According to the SEC fair-access policy, every request needs a descriptive User-Agent header with contact information. The response carries hits.total.value plus each filing's CIK, form, and date — endpoint details on the EDGAR full-text access card.

What does a Form D disclose?

A Form D is a fixed 16-item form, and it discloses the shape of the round, not its cap table. According to the SEC's own form structure, the 16 items compress into 5 field groups that matter for research. In our data, the offering amount and the industry group are the 2 highest-leverage fields — they turn a filing into a dated, sector-tagged funding event:

The honest limit sits in the last row: investor identities, valuations, and terms stay private. In our data, that makes Form D a funding signal, not a funding database — you learn that a company raised, when, and in what sector.

Can Form D power a funding-signals feed?

Yes — a funding-signals feed is a polling loop over the date-windowed search above, and in our data it surfaces on the order of 750 filings per month at the 2026 run rate (5,256 in just under 7 months). Each hit joins onward through the CIK: the submissions endpoint resolves the filer to its profile and filing history, and the state registries add incorporation records for the same entities. Two design rules from our own use, so the feed stays honest:

• Treat each filing as a sector-and-timing signal; never infer investor names or valuations the form does not contain.
• Expect a lag: according to SEC rules the filing may come up to 15 days after the first sale, so Form D confirms rounds — it does not scoop the press release.

The wider workflow — resolving names to CIKs and pulling full filing histories — is covered in the SEC EDGAR API guide.

Test page. Endpoint and counts as probed on 2026-07-24 via the Aidenix Atlas catalog. Not yet editorially reviewed.