Brightwave: Coverage Update — 21 Oct 2026

Brightwave was rated on the strength of its investment research platform. Between June and October 2026 the company's public presence changed in ways that bring the availability of that platform into question. We record what we observed and place the rating Under Evaluation until the company confirms its position.

What we observed

• Website: brightwave.io now describes "an agent infrastructure company" and links only to Tidebreak; former product and pricing pages no longer resolve.
• Application: the research application's login address redirects to the homepage, with no shutdown notice.
• Leadership: the About page lists Brandon Kotara as Founder and CEO; Mike Conover is no longer listed.
• Releases: Tidebreak 1.0 (25 September 2026) was described as "the last release from Brightwave"; no product posts since 19 June 2026.

What it means for buyers

• Existing users: request written confirmation of support, data export and deletion before renewal.
• Prospective buyers: we do not recommend starting an evaluation until the company confirms the product's status.
• Alternatives: see Section 1 for comparable vendors in our coverage.

We did not locate any announcement of a pivot, acquisition, wind-down or leadership change, and our observations rest on changes to the company's own websites and code repositories. We have asked the company to confirm its position and will update this note on its response.

The following are the capabilities and characteristics that, in our assessment, most distinguish Brightwave within the AI Research & Intelligence market. Each is drawn from publicly documented product capability, published interviews with management, or independent hands-on review.

• Technical founders: Mike Conover co-created Databricks' Dolly and led machine-learning teams at LinkedIn and Workday; Brandon Kotara was CTO of the regulated exchange LedgerX.
• Shipping pace in 2026: Twenty-five product releases between January and June 2026, including thirteen client surfaces, Office agents and desktop apps.
• Security engineering: Detailed public write-ups on sandboxed agent computers, credential-swapping egress proxies and prompt-injection defences.
• Model flexibility: Models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google with automatic failover and user selection.
• Citations: Sentence-level attribution with bounding boxes on the source passage.

The following are factors that prospective clients should weigh, and areas where our public review did not find sufficient evidence to reach a settled view. Several are common across vendors at this stage of the market and are not specific to Brightwave. We encourage prospective clients to raise each of them directly with the company; we have done the same, and will update this note as answers arrive.

• Product continuity: The website now describes an agent infrastructure company and the research application's login redirects to the homepage. Existing users should obtain written confirmation of support, roadmap and data-export rights.
• Leadership: Brandon Kotara is listed as Founder and CEO; Mike Conover, chief executive through 2025, is no longer listed. No announcement was located.
• Funding: No financing has been located since the $15m Series A in October 2024.
• Data retention: Users should confirm how long their documents are retained and how deletion is evidenced; the DPA keeps data as long as necessary.
• Enterprise evidence: Only "SOC 2 compliant" language was located; SSO, deployment options and information-barrier controls were not.
• Content: Quartr is the only licensed data partner named.

Brightwave Inc. was founded in 2023 by Mike Conover and Brandon Kotara and was based in Boulder, Colorado, with a New York presence. It raised a $6m seed led by Decibel Partners with Point72 Ventures and Moonfire Ventures in June 2024, and a $15m Series A led by Decibel with OMERS Ventures in October 2024.

Its research platform served customers it described as representing over $120bn in assets, from RIAs to a $20bn crossover hedge fund, and received a TIME Best Inventions special mention in 2024. In September 2026 its open-source desktop application, Tidebreak, reached version 1.0, described as the last release from Brightwave, with development moving to an engineer's personal repository.

Company-reported figures are shown as such and are not independently verified. Verification is carried into the vendor questionnaire.

The dimension scores below describe the research platform as last documented in mid-2026, re-scored to the full sub-criteria standard on 21 October 2026. They will be withdrawn or revised once its status is confirmed.

These are the areas where our public review did not find sufficient evidence to form a settled view. We have put them to the company and will update this note when they are answered. Prospective clients may find them a useful agenda for their own evaluation call.

• Whether the investment research product is still sold and supported, and for how long.
• The date and circumstances of the leadership change.
• Data-export and deletion arrangements for existing users.
• Whether Brightwave has been acquired, recapitalised or is winding down the research business.
• The relationship between Brightwave and Tidebreak going forward.
• Current headcount and runway.

Appendix — Sources and Coverage

Rating Review outside the quarterly cycle, applying the full sub-criteria standard after the 20 October coverage update. This note will be revised when the company confirms the status of its research product.

Sources. Brightwave website (homepage, about, blog, security, DPA), application and documentation sites (October 2026); GitHub brightwave-inc/tidebreak releases and pull requests (September 2026); Tidebreak website; Business Wire releases (June 2024 to August 2025); TechCrunch and BizWest (October 2024); Decibel (June 2024); Quartr (February 2025); Apple App Store listing. Peer scores as published on the GAII Intelligence page, 21 October 2026.

Verification status. This Rating Review is prepared from public information observed on 21 October 2026. No company statement was available at publication.

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