On June 25, 2026, PitchBook made a decisive move that could redefine how private capital professionals interact with their most critical data. The company announced the launch of a federated connector that integrates its private market intelligence directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot, spanning Copilot in Excel, Copilot Chat, and other productivity surfaces. For the legions of analysts, associates, and dealmakers who live inside Excel spreadsheets, this means real-time access to valuations, funding rounds, investor profiles, and deal analytics without ever leaving the familiar grid.

This isn't just another API integration. It represents a fundamental shift in how financial data flows into productivity tools, enabling natural language queries to surface institutional-quality data instantly. The implications range from faster due diligence to more informed investment committee memos, all powered by generative AI that understands context and can weave together data from multiple sources.

The Context: AI Meets Private Markets

The private capital industry—encompassing private equity, venture capital, and debt—has long grappled with data fragmentation. Information about companies, funds, and deals sits in siloed databases, PDFs, and spreadsheets, requiring manual copy-paste gymnastics to consolidate. Microsoft 365 Copilot, with its ability to reason across documents, emails, and now external connectors, promises to break down these walls.

PitchBook, a subsidiary of Morningstar, provides one of the most comprehensive datasets on private companies, covering more than 3.5 million businesses and over 100,000 funds globally. Its data is the lifeblood of investment workflows. By making this data a first-class citizen within Copilot, the federated connector eliminates the need to toggle between PitchBook’s web interface and Excel, or to rely on static exports that quickly become outdated.

What Is a Federated Connector?

Microsoft introduced federated connectors as part of its broader extensibility framework for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Unlike traditional plugins that augment Copilot’s capabilities with discrete actions—like generating a chart or summarizing a meeting—connectors allow real-time retrieval of data from external sources using the same security context as the user. This means that when a user prompts Copilot with a question about a company’s valuation, the connector securely queries PitchBook’s API and returns the relevant data, which Copilot then formats or analyzes as instructed.

Federated connectors are built on the Microsoft Graph Connector platform, which also powers search integrations for Microsoft Search. However, for Copilot, the data flows bidirectionally: the connector not only indexes content but also serves as a live query endpoint. This architecture ensures that responses draw on the freshest available data, not just a periodically refreshed index.

Inside the PitchBook Integration

With the new connector, users can ask Copilot in Excel to “retrieve the latest pre-money valuation, total funding raised, and lead investors for Stripe,” and the data will populate directly into the spreadsheet. In Copilot Chat, a user could ask, “Compare the revenue multiples of SaaS companies that raised Series B rounds in 2025,” and receive a synthesized answer that draws on PitchBook’s proprietary data.

The connector supports a wide range of PitchBook data points, including:

  • Company profiles and descriptions
  • Financing histories and cap tables (where available)
  • Deal dates, sizes, and participants
  • Fund performance metrics
  • Investor mandates and portfolio companies
  • Industry classifications and benchmarks

Because Copilot understands data types and relationships, it can also suggest relevant charts, pivot tables, or formulas based on the retrieved data. For example, after pulling in a list of venture capital deals, Copilot might offer to create a clustering analysis by sector or an IRR waterfall chart.

Transforming Financial Workflows in Excel

Excel remains the undisputed workhorse of private capital analysis. However, the process of populating models with external data has always been fragile: manual entry errors, versioning nightmares, and stale data plagued even the most disciplined teams. PitchBook’s connector addresses these pain points directly.

Imagine an analyst building a comps model for a potential acquisition. Instead of manually copying data from PitchBook’s website or a downloaded CSV, she types a natural language prompt into Copilot in Excel: “For companies similar to [Target Company] in terms of size and sector, pull revenue, EBITDA, and enterprise value for the last three years.” Copilot retrieves the data via the connector, structures it into a table, and even suggests formatting and validation checks. The analyst can then instruct Copilot to “create a waterfall chart showing the components of enterprise value for each comp” or “highlight any cells where EBIT margins are below the industry median.”

This doesn’t just save time; it fundamentally elevates the analytical capability of everyone on the team. Junior staff can produce sophisticated, data-driven outputs under the guidance of senior professionals, who can then focus on interpretation and strategy rather than data wrangling.

Use Cases Across Private Capital

Venture Capital

For early-stage investors, speed of insight is paramount. A VC principal can ask Copilot in Outlook: “Summarize the seed funding history of the top 10 generative AI startups founded in 2025,” while reviewing an email about a new investment opportunity. Copilot uses the PitchBook connector to pull the relevant data and presents it directly in the email sidebar, enabling a quick, informed decision without breaking context.

Private Equity

PE deal teams often screen hundreds of potential targets for platform acquisitions. With the connector, a partner could ask Copilot in Excel to “identify all North American industrial service companies with EBITDA between $10 million and $25 million that have had no institutional investment in the last two years.” The resulting list, complete with PitchBook profiles and financials, becomes the starting point for a sourcing sprint.

Fund of Funds and LP Advisory

Institutional investors evaluating fund commitments need to track historical performance and manager skill. A user can prompt Copilot in Teams during a due diligence meeting: “Show me the quartile rankings of all U.S. mid-market buyout funds with a 2022 vintage,” and the connector surfaces the data on screen. This speeds up conversations and allows for more dynamic, data-driven questioning.

Security, Compliance, and Data Governance

Financial institutions are notoriously cautious about AI tools that touch sensitive data. PitchBook and Microsoft designed the connector with enterprise-grade security in mind. The connector operates within the user’s existing PitchBook license and authentication, meaning that data access controls are preserved. If a user’s PitchBook subscription only includes North American VC data, Copilot will not return European or buyout data through the connector.

Moreover, the data flow is encrypted and adheres to Microsoft’s stringent compliance standards. Organizations can manage the connector through Microsoft 365’s admin center, applying policies that restrict its use to certain security groups or geographies. This is critical for firms that must comply with regulations like GDPR or the SEC’s cybersecurity rules.

Pricing and Availability

As of the June 2026 announcement, the PitchBook federated connector is available for Microsoft 365 Copilot users who also hold a PitchBook subscription. Pricing is included in the standard PitchBook licensing package, with no additional cost for existing subscribers. However, organizations must have activated Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and the administrator must enable the connector in the admin center. Both PitchBook and Microsoft offer dedicated onboarding support for enterprise clients.

This bundled approach reflects the strategic importance Microsoft places on deep industry connectors as a differentiator for Copilot. By making premium data seamlessly accessible, Microsoft bets that organizations will see Copilot not just as a productivity booster but as an essential analytical engine.

Competitive Landscape and Industry Impact

The private market data industry has seen increasing consolidation and platform integrations. Rivals like Preqin and Carta have experimented with AI assistants, but PitchBook’s first-mover advantage with a native Microsoft 365 Connector could set a new standard. For Microsoft, this connector strengthens Copilot’s position in the lucrative financial services vertical, where Excel and Outlook dominate but specialized data remains outside the loop.

For the broader ecosystem, expect a ripple effect. Investment banks, consulting firms, and corporate development teams that evaluate private companies will likely demand similar connectors for their preferred data providers. Microsoft’s connector framework is designed to scale, meaning we could soon see integrations with Bloomberg, FactSet, or proprietary internal databases.

The Road Ahead: AI-Native Financial Analysis

This integration hints at a future where the boundary between analysis and raw data disappears. As Copilot matures, it will not only retrieve data but also execute multi-step analytical reasoning. Imagine prompting: “Based on PitchBook data, build a model that forecasts IRR for a hypothetical $50M growth equity investment in a company with characteristics similar to the median Series C startup in the logistics sector.” Copilot could retrieve historical performance data, construct a Monte Carlo simulation, and output a full sensitivity table—all in seconds.

Microsoft has also signaled that future updates to Copilot will include agentic capabilities, where the AI can act on behalf of the user to monitor data sources and trigger alerts. A PitchBook connector could power alerts like “notify me if any fintech company in my watchlist raises a round above $100M” or “update my portfolio valuation model daily with the latest market comps from PitchBook.”

For now, the immediate benefit is clear: private markets professionals can finally access institutional-grade intelligence where they work, not where the data lives. That’s a productivity unlock that promises to compress deal cycles, enhance due diligence, and ultimately lead to more informed investment decisions.

Getting Started

Administrators interested in enabling the PitchBook connector can find it in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Settings > Integrated Apps. A step-by-step configuration guide is available on Microsoft’s documentation portal. Users must confirm their organization has both an active Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription and a valid PitchBook license. Once configured, Copilot will automatically recognize the connector when users reference PitchBook in their prompts.

For firms that have not yet adopted Copilot, this connector may be the tipping point. The ability to combine the world’s most popular spreadsheet with the world’s most comprehensive private markets dataset—through the simplest interface imaginable, natural language—is a compelling value proposition.