Stears

Stears is a web-based financial data and AI research platform for professional investors and organisations analysing African private markets.

Key capabilities include:

• Company intelligence in undercovered markets, including tools to find African businesses and review available information such as category positioning, financials, and management details.
• Deal and transaction data, including valuations, terms, deal comparables, and investor participation to support pricing, benchmarking, and market context.
• Investor and fund manager tracking, to identify LPs by mandate and follow how managers invest, including their exits.
• Fundraising pipeline tools that match LPs to a fund's strategy.
• Country-risk and macro coverage across 54 African markets, with economic performance indicators, regulation context, and currency trends to support risk assessment.
• Sector and market intelligence, covering topics such as market size, growth, competition, and policy factors.
• Deep Search (AI research) that synthesises answers from Africa-focused qualitative research and provides sources users can check, plus AI agents trained on African data for asset managers.
• Free resources, including Stears Open Data, the SVP Liquidity Index, research reports, and newsletters.

Available on Web.

Target users include global funds, private equity and credit firms, investment banks, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, corporates, and service providers investing in or operating across Africa. Access is offered via trial requests and paid subscription licences (pricing not listed).

Stears is notable for concentrating on African data coverage, including all 54 African markets and named focus markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, and South Africa, plus publishing research reports on private capital and fundraising activity. The company has also announced a $3.3 million seed round led by MaC Venture Capital, with participation from Serena Ventures, Melo 7 Tech Partners, Luminate Fund, and Cascador, and is listed as a data partner for the 2026 SuperReturn Africa Awards.