PredictLeads’ News Events dataset categorizes company news into 37 distinct event types, grouped into families like expansion, investment, leadership change, and partnerships, so GTM teams can filter directly for the exact trigger that matters instead of parsing headlines by hand. A sales or marketing team chasing “companies that raised funding” and a team chasing “companies that just lost a key executive” need very different signals. Structured categories let both queries run against the same dataset without either team reading a single article.

Why category structure matters more than raw news volume

Most news feeds return everything and expect a human (or a fragile keyword filter) to sort it. PredictLeads’ News Events Dataset assigns every detected signal to one of 37 categories up front, using machine learning models trained on the underlying article text. That means a query for receives_financing returns funding events specifically, not every article that happens to mention money.

The 37 categories, grouped by family

Acquisition: acquires, merges_with, sells_assets_to. Track consolidation in a market or flag when a target account gets acquired mid-deal cycle.

Contract: signs_new_client, loses_client. Direct evidence of who’s winning or losing business, useful for competitive displacement plays.

Corporate challenges: declares_bankruptcy, files_suit_against, has_issues_with (vulnerability issues). Risk signals for both sales qualification and investment due diligence.

Cost cutting: closes_offices_in, decreases_headcount_by. The inverse of a growth signal. Useful for deprioritizing accounts or, for some products, identifying restructuring-driven buying needs.

Expansion: attends_event, expands_facilities, expands_offices_in, expands_offices_to, increases_headcount_by, opens_new_location. The core GTM growth-signal family. New offices, new headcount, and event attendance all point to a company that’s scaling and has budget in motion.

Investment: goes_public, has_earnings, has_revenue, has_valuation, invests_into, invests_into_assets, receives_financing. Funding and financial-health signals, useful for timing outreach and for investor research.

Leadership: hires, leaves, promotes, retires_from. New executives are a well-known trigger for re-evaluating vendor relationships. This family tracks exactly when that happens and who’s involved.

New offering: integrates_with, is_developing, launches. Product and partnership signals that indicate a company is actively building, which often precedes a related buying need.

Partnership: ends_partnership_with, partners_with. Direct visibility into who a company is working with, and when that changes.

Recognition: receives_award, recognized_as. Lower-urgency signals, but useful for warm-outreach personalization (“congrats on the award” openers, backed by a real source).

Relational: identified_as_competitor_of, spins_off_company, spins_off_division. Market-structure signals for competitive mapping and for tracking corporate restructuring.

How to use categories instead of keyword search

Filtering by category rather than searching article text has two practical advantages. First, precision: a keyword search for “hiring” will also catch articles about hiring freezes, hiring lawsuits, and unrelated uses of the word. A category filter for increases_headcount_by returns only that signal. Second, composability: a GTM team can combine categories in one query, for example pulling every receives_financing and increases_headcount_by event in the last 90 days to build a single “funded and growing” target list, without writing custom text parsing.

FAQ

How many news event categories does PredictLeads track?

37.

Which news event categories are best for sales prospecting?

The expansion family (increases_headcount_by, expands_offices_to, expands_facilities) and the investment family (receives_financing) are the most commonly used prospecting triggers, since both indicate active growth and budget.

Can I filter for multiple news event categories at once?

Yes. PredictLeads’ News Events endpoints accept a comma-separated list of categories, so a single query can combine, for example, receives_financing and increases_headcount_by to find companies that are both funded and actively hiring.

Are news event categories assigned automatically?

Yes. Categories are assigned by machine learning models trained on the source article text, not by manual tagging, which is what allows the dataset to stay current across 20 million-plus news sources.

Create a free PredictLeads account and filter News Events by category to build your own trigger-based target lists. 100 free API requests a month, no contract required.