Three steps from your key to your agent answering a question about startups. It takes about two minutes. You need an agent that can use MCP, such as Claude Code or Cursor.
Join the waitlist with your email. When your access is on, we email you a link. Open it and press Show my key.
The link works once. We store a hash of your key, not the key, so that page is the only time you see it. If the link has run out, sign in to your account with the same email and make a key there.
The key page has a button, Copy for my agent. Press it and paste into your agent. The text carries your key and the setup steps, so there is nothing to configure by hand. It looks like this:
Set up StartupGraph for me. It is a database of startups (funding rounds, headcount, people) with an MCP server and a REST API. My API key: sg_live_... 1. Add the MCP server. In Claude Code, run: claude mcp add --transport http --scope user startupgraph https://startupgraph.dev/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer sg_live_..." 2. Read https://startupgraph.dev/llms.txt. It lists every endpoint and tool. 3. Check the key works: GET https://startupgraph.dev/api/keys/me 4. Tell me it is connected and how many tokens I have. 5. Then answer my first question: "Who invested in Mistral AI, and how much has it raised?"
Setting up by hand in another client? Add a remote HTTP MCP server at https://startupgraph.dev/mcp with the header Authorization: Bearer and your key.
The block ends with a first question, so your agent comes back with Mistral AI's funding rounds and investors, each with its source. That first answer costs about 430 tokens.
Then ask your own. These work today:
Which companies has Sequoia Capital backed, and how much has each raised?
Who invested in Anthropic, round by round?
What does StartupGraph cover, and where are the gaps?
The last one calls the coverage tool. Use it before you trust an empty result: funding rounds are sparse and stop in early 2026, so a question about last month's rounds comes back empty.
The block above does all of this for you. Here are the calls one at a time, for a person who wants to see each one, or an agent reading this page.
One data call needs no key. It counts what landed in the past hour, day, week and month.
curl https://startupgraph.dev/api/pulse
What came back on 2026-10-13. The latest list had eight entries; two are shown, and lines are broken to fit.
{"data":{"as_of":"2026-10-13T17:42:10.657Z","last_change_at":"2026-10-13 17:24:56",
"windows":{
"hour":{"facts_submitted":7,"facts_verified":4,"companies_added":1,
"funding_rounds_added":3,"job_counts_updated":0,"changes":7},
"day":{"facts_submitted":8,"facts_verified":4,"companies_added":1,
"funding_rounds_added":3,"job_counts_updated":0,"changes":8},
"week":{"facts_submitted":8,"facts_verified":4,"companies_added":1,
"funding_rounds_added":3,"job_counts_updated":0,"changes":8},
"month":{"facts_submitted":8,"facts_verified":4,"companies_added":1,
"funding_rounds_added":3,"job_counts_updated":0,"changes":8}},
"latest":[
{"field":"people","verified":0,"changed_at":"2026-10-13 17:24:56",
"slug":"smarkets","name":"Smarkets"},
{"field":"people","verified":0,"changed_at":"2026-10-13 17:22:20",
"slug":"smarkets","name":"Smarkets"}]}}Send it as a bearer token. Without it, the API and the MCP server both answer 401 with this body:
curl https://startupgraph.dev/api/keys/me
{"error":"missing_key","message":"Send Authorization: Bearer <key>. Get one: POST /api/keys {\"email\"}."}
Put your key in an environment variable. The commands below read it from there:
export STARTUPGRAPH_KEY=sg_live_...
In Claude Code:
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user startupgraph https://startupgraph.dev/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer $STARTUPGRAPH_KEY"
--scope user adds the server for every project on your machine, not only the folder you ran the command in. Restart the agent so it loads the tools.
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $STARTUPGRAPH_KEY" https://startupgraph.dev/api/keys/me
This call costs no tokens. The answer is a data object with your tier, your limits (tokens_per_month, tokens_per_day, calls_per_minute), tokens_remaining_today, tokens_remaining_this_month, credits_earned, and a ledger of the credits behind that number.
curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer $STARTUPGRAPH_KEY" https://startupgraph.dev/api/companies/mistral-ai/funding
The answer is data, a list of funding rounds, newest first. Each round has round_type, amount, currency, announced_date, source_url and investors, a list of names. The response header X-Tokens-Charged says what the call cost.
Over MCP the same call is the funding_rounds tool with slug set to mistral-ai.
Every call costs tokens, about one for every four bytes we return. A free key starts with 10,000. A full company profile costs about 1,800, a list of funding rounds for one company about 430. Checking your balance is free: ask your agent "how many StartupGraph tokens do I have left?"
When your agent reads something StartupGraph does not have, it can submit the fact with its source URL. We fetch the source and check it. Verified facts add tokens to your key.
Here is a funding announcement: <paste URL>. Read it, pull out the company, round type, amount and date, and submit it to StartupGraph with submit_fact.
More things to build once you are connected are on the Build page. The rest of the documentation is listed on the Documentation page.
The agent says the tools are not there. Most agents load new MCP servers only when they start. Restart the agent and ask again.
Lost your key, or the link ran out. Sign in to your account and make a new one. Your tokens stay.
Anything else. Write to hello@startupgraph.dev.