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Datenna
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About Datenna

Decoding China.
Empowering decisions.

Datenna is an intelligence platform built to answer one question: what is China actually building, who is building it, and who is behind them? We collect, structure and analyse primary-source Chinese data at scale. The result is a continuously maintained graph of 50M+ Chinese entities, covering companies, research institutes and individuals, with ownership structures, state connections, technology activities and procurement relationships all mapped and verified.

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7+
Years of mission-driven work
50M+
Chinese entities tracked
2
Global offices
1B+
Data points in platform
The Problem

China's techno-economic landscape is
 opaque by design.

Ownership is layered. Military connections sit inside commercial entities. State-linked organisations operate through commercial facades. The entities that matter most rarely appear on any sanctions list until after the fact.

Standard tools weren't designed for this. They treat China like any other market, pulling from data sources that are incomplete, inaccurate, or simply not built for the depth that defence, investment and export control decisions require.

The gap this creates is real and specific.

Datenna was built to close that gap.

Defence & Intelligence

Military-civil fusion indicators missed by standard screening tools.

Export Control

Entities reach restricted markets before controls can catch them.

Investment Screening

Beneficial ownership buried several layers deep and invisible at the point of decision.

Supply Chain

Strategic exposure sitting three or four tiers down, well beyond the reach of tier-one screening.

Our Mission

To deliver intelligence on China that holds up when the stakes are highest.

Not more data. Not faster commentary. Intelligence that is traceable to source and verified at every layer.

50M+

Chinese Entities Tracked

Our Vision

A world where governments and strategic industries can see inside China's landscape clearly enough to act on what they find.

Decisions built on evidence rather than assumption. Before they become policy failures or commercial exposures.

Our Story

Founded on a decade inside China, and the intelligence gap it revealed.

Jaap van Etten, Founder and CEO of Datenna

“I watched governments make critical decisions with fundamentally incomplete information. I knew what they were missing.”

Jaap van Etten, Founder & CEO

Datenna was founded by people who had spent years living and working inside China, navigating its corporate system, building source networks and developing a detailed picture of how the landscape actually works from the ground up.

That experience revealed something important: the intelligence gap wasn't a technology problem. It was a data problem. The sources that matter most, Chinese-language registries, procurement records, patent filings, research funding databases, government publications, weren't being collected at the depth or scale that serious analysis requires.

Building an intelligence platform capable of closing that gap meant creating collection and entity-resolution capabilities that didn't exist anywhere else. Datenna remains independent, focused on one problem, and built from the inside out. Every record traces back to original-source data.

What we build

An intelligence platform built on
data that doesn't exist anywhere else.

Datenna collects, structures, and analyses primary-source Chinese data at scale, combining AI-powered entity resolution, deep ownership analysis, and subject matter expertise to map the people, organisations, and networks that shape China's strategic landscape.

We Collect

Primary data from the source.

Chinese registries, procurement records, patent filings, research funding and government publications, gathered directly and not from secondary feeds.

We Connect

50M+ entities. One interconnected graph

AI-powered entity resolution links companies, individuals and research institutes across ownership depth, military-civil fusion indicators and procurement networks.

We Deliver

Intelligence-grade outputs. Every record traceable.

Structured for export control, investment screening, supply chain and defence decisions. Every data point traceable to its original source, built in from the start and not added afterwards.

We Collect

Primary data from the source.

Chinese registries, procurement records, patent filings, research funding and government publications, gathered directly and not from secondary feeds.

We Connect

50M+ entities. One interconnected graph

AI-powered entity resolution links companies, individuals and research institutes across ownership depth, military-civil fusion indicators and procurement networks.

We Deliver

Intelligence-grade outputs. Every record traceable.

Structured for export control, investment screening, supply chain and defence decisions. Every data point traceable to its original source, built in from the start and not added afterwards.

How We Think

Four beliefs that shape everything we build.

These aren't values written for a wall. They're the intellectual commitments that determine how we collect, how we build and how we deliver.

Belief 01

The source is everything.

We start with primary Chinese-language records: registries, filings, procurement databases, research outputs. If it isn't traceable to source, it doesn't go in.

Belief 02

Complexity is the point.

China's opacity isn't an obstacle. It's the problem Datenna was built to solve. We go deeper where others stop.

Belief 03

Independence is non-negotiable.

No Chinese data vendors. No outbound traffic routed through China. European sovereignty by design.

Belief 04

Provenance or nothing.

Intelligence is only as good as its evidence chain. Every record, every data point, traceable to source.

Why It Matters

China's strategic ambitions are accelerating.
The intelligence gap is not.

Governments and strategic industries are making consequential decisions about China every day, on investment, procurement, export controls and defence. Most of them are making those decisions with incomplete information. The consequences are not hypothetical.

01
Defence & Intelligence

Military-civil fusion sits hidden inside commercial entities. Procurement relationships and research ties are invisible to standard screening tools until it is already too late.

02
Export Control

Entities reach restricted markets before designations can catch them. The damage is done before the list is updated. Standard tools were not built to see what Datenna sees.

Datenna exists to close that gap, by making China's landscape visible and the decisions built on it defensible.

03
Investment Screening

Beneficial ownership buried several layers deep. Military-civil fusion indicators absent from standard screening. The exposure is not visible until after the decision is made.

04
Supply Chain

Strategic dependencies sitting three or four tiers down, irrelevant to tier-one screening and critical to national security. Hidden until Datenna makes them visible.

Leadership & Board

The people behind the platform.

Diplomatic experience, technical depth, commercial rigour, and financial discipline, backed by oversight from the highest levels of national security and intelligence.

Executive Team
Board Member

Darren Tebbitt

Chief Operating & Revenue Officer

Leads commercial strategy, go-to-market, and operational execution across the full Datenna business.

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Edward Brinkmann

Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer

Co-founder and architect of the Datenna intelligence platform. Building our next phase of AI-powered collection and client experience.

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Board Member

Jaap van Etten

Co-founder & CEO

Former Dutch diplomat and Science & Technology Attaché in Beijing. Founded Datenna after a decade inside China.

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Sander van de Ven

Chief Technology Officer

Leads technical strategy and information security. CISSP and CISM certified, with dual CTO and CISO responsibilities.

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Stijn Hurkmans

Chief Financial Officer

Oversees financial strategy and planning. Background in data science and finance; previously CFO consultant at EY.

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Board & Advisors

Inge Bryan

Chairman of the Board

Former Deputy Chief of the National Criminal Investigation Division and CEO of Fox-IT. One of Europe's foremost authorities on national security.

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Sir Alex Younger

Advisor

Former Chief of MI6. Brings unparalleled understanding of intelligence operations and geopolitical risk.

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Michael Lucassen

Board Member

Managing Partner at TIN Capital, one of Europe's dedicated cybersecurity and deep-tech venture funds.

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Andy Lürling

Advisor

Founding Partner at LUMO Labs. Deep experience scaling European technology companies through international growth.

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Roel Reijnen

Board Member

Partner at TIN Capital, focused on cybersecurity and deep-tech investment across Europe.

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Join the team

Build intelligence that stands up when decisions matter most.

Our chair is a former Deputy Chief of the National Criminal Investigation Division and CEO of Fox-IT. Our advisors include a former Chief of MI6. The work is deployed by defence ministries and intelligence agencies. The bar here is genuinely high, and that is the point.

Datenna is building long-term intelligence infrastructure for democratic institutions and strategic industries. Not optimising for a funding round. Not chasing growth metrics. Building something that will still matter in twenty years.

If that is what you are looking for, we would like to hear from you.

Explore Careers
01

Work that matters

The decisions made with our data shape national security and strategic policy. That is not a marketing claim.

02

Rare expertise

Genuine China knowledge, technical depth, and people who came here because the problem is hard. Not found elsewhere.

03

Built to last

Infrastructure thinking, not startup thinking. The mission drives the roadmap, not the other way around.