What the ⚡ flag actually means

Two provenance states

A reviewed row was checked against a company announcement, a filing or established reporting, and its instrument, amount and date were confirmed. An auto-collected row came from a news feed, carries a source URL, and may still be a duplicate, a rounded figure or a report about a programme rather than a financing. Both states are stored in the JSON and rendered visibly on the site.

We do not publish a numerical confidence percentage. A percentage implies a calibration we have not measured, and would give an unverified row a spurious air of precision. A binary reviewed flag plus a visible source is more honest and easier for a reader to act on.

What an unverified row may show

It may show the facts the source reported: company, round label, date, approximate amount, region, technology and a clickable source URL. It may not show an editorial interpretation. Since the sentence generator was removed, a future event without a hand-written note renders only a data-only line. This means the site can grow through automation without ever producing mass-produced commentary.

Auto-detected amounts also affect cumulative totals only after the separate 60-day overlap check described in the methodology, so a flurry of headlines about one round does not inflate a company's total.

How to verify a figure yourself

Open the source link on the row, then compare the instrument and amount with the raw JSON record. If the report describes a programme ceiling, a letter of intent or a duplicate of an existing round, the corrections page explains how to send a fix and how quickly we acknowledge it. We publish the raw ledger rather than only the rendered table precisely so this check is possible.

Auto-collected rows currently published, with their source links

14 of 51 published events currently come from automated monitoring rather than an editor. Each keeps a visible ⚡ flag and a clickable source URL. 37 events are human-reviewed.

The practical takeaway

Automation here is a discovery mechanism, not an author. The ⚡ flag exists so that distinction stays visible on the page instead of being buried in a data file.