Verified Due-Diligence Research

Put your name behind a number you didn't have to hope was true.

Built for funds, deal teams, and founders who can't afford to cite a claim that turns out wrong. Every finding in your report is run through the Certainty-Gap Method and traced to the real source it came from — so you're not the one explaining, in the room, why the number was off.

No call required — just send your question.

Built for investment funds, deal teams, and founders making a real decision on the other side of the research — not general curiosity.

The market, honestly

Due diligence research is a real, well-paid discipline — when it's trustworthy.

No inflated numbers. What the 2026 data actually says about this market.

$24–95/hr
US freelance market-research / due-diligence rates, 2026 — investment-grade research at the top end.
Source: ZipRecruiter, YunoJuno 2026 rate benchmarks
30–50%
Faster diligence turnaround reported by teams that adopted AI-augmented research — when the output is actually checked.
Source: Deloitte GenAI adoption research, 2026
1,440
AI-generated due-diligence answers a 2026 study had to hand-trace back to their real source before anyone could trust them.
Source: 2026 chatbot due-diligence reliability study (20 companies × 6 assistants)
The actual problem

Fast AI research and trustworthy AI research are not the same thing.

This isn't a hypothetical. It's the documented state of the market right now.

A 2026 study ran the same due-diligence questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot against 20 real private B2B companies — 240 company/prompt pairs, 1,440 individual answers. The researchers found they had to manually trace every single factual claim back to its source before any of it was usable. The skill that matters now isn't reading fast, it's knowing which AI-generated claims to trust — and being able to prove it.

This is exactly the gap Groundtruth is built to close, not paper over with a faster chatbot.

The Certainty-Gap Method

Every claim gets reduced to what's actually true before it gets an interpretation.

This is the same named discipline StillOS runs its own verification infrastructure on, applied to your research question: find what's mechanically, procedurally verifiable before any narrative gets layered on top.

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Source-traced, not summarized

Every factual claim in the report links to the primary source it came from — a filing, a dataset, a live page fetch — not a paraphrase of a paraphrase.

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Multi-provider cross-check

Findings are checked across independent search and retrieval paths before they make it into the report, so one bad source can't silently become "the answer."

balance

Honest confidence, not false precision

Where the evidence is thin, the report says so plainly instead of rounding an uncertain claim into a confident-sounding number.

Generic AI research
  • One-shot chatbot answer, no citation trail
  • Confidently states things it can't actually verify
  • You re-check every claim yourself before you can use it
Groundtruth
  • Every claim linked to the real source it came from
  • Cross-checked across independent retrieval paths
  • Delivered with a source ledger you can hand to anyone
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The Groundtruth Guarantee

If any claim in your report doesn't hold up against the source it's cited to, that finding gets redone at no charge — no argument, no fine print. You're not paying for effort or a nicely formatted document. You're paying for a report you can put your own name behind.

What you get

Three ways to engage, scoped to how deep the question actually needs to go.

Pricing reflects 2026 US freelance due-diligence market rates — not inflated, not a loss-leader. Start with a Brief to see the method firsthand; most engagements grow from there once the first report lands.

Verified Brief
from $250
flat fee · 24–48hr turnaround
  • One focused research question, fully source-traced
  • Company, claim, or market snapshot
  • Full source ledger included
Request a brief
MOST REQUESTED
Due Diligence Report
$1,200–3,500
project-based · scoped to the deal
Everything in Verified Brief, plus:
  • Market sizing, competitor benchmarking, financial/claims research
  • Every finding cross-checked and cited
  • Delivered as a report + full source ledger
  • Direct working session to scope before it starts
  • Covered by the Groundtruth Guarantee
Scope a report
Embedded Research Partner
$65–95/hr
retained · ongoing engagement
Everything above, standing:
  • Standing research capacity for a fund, deal team, or founder
  • Same source-traced standard on every deliverable
  • Priced at market rate for investment-grade research
  • Covered by the Groundtruth Guarantee
Talk about a retainer

Founder-reviewed, not outsourced — every report is directly touched by the same process behind this page, not handed off to a contractor pool. That's a real capacity limit, not a marketing device: engagement volume is kept deliberately small so the standard doesn't slip.

How it works

Four steps. No black box.

01

Scope the real question

What decision is this research actually feeding? That determines depth, not a generic template.

02

Source-traced research

Every claim gets run down to a primary source and cross-checked before it's written down as a fact.

03

Honest synthesis

Findings get interpreted only after the underlying facts are locked — and every uncertain claim is labeled as uncertain, not smoothed over.

04

Report + source ledger

You get the findings AND the full trail behind them — hand it to your own team or investors without re-verifying it yourself.

Built by the team behind live verification infrastructure, not a pitch. Groundtruth is run by the same team operating StillOS's notary/verification systems — real, live infrastructure that signs and screens claims for autonomous agents today. Notary's checks are narrow and automated (sanctions screening, track-record grading, trust scans); Groundtruth applies that same source-first discipline to the broader, open-ended questions no automated check can answer alone. Same standard, different shape of problem — not the same pipeline, and we're not going to pretend it is.

Before you ask

The questions people actually have.

Why not just ask ChatGPT myself?

You can — and for a lot of questions, that's genuinely fine. The difference shows up the moment the answer matters: a 2026 study found researchers had to hand-trace every single AI-generated due-diligence claim back to its source before trusting it. Groundtruth does that tracing as part of the deliverable, not as homework you take on after.

What if the research doesn't find what I was hoping for?

Then the report says that, plainly. The entire value of this is that the findings are real whether or not they're convenient — a report that only ever confirms what you wanted to hear isn't due diligence, it's a compliment.

How fast is turnaround, really?

24–48 hours for a Verified Brief. Due Diligence Reports are scoped up front with a specific delivery date before anything starts — no open-ended "we'll get to it."

What if I'm not sure exactly what to ask for?

Send what you've got, even half-formed. The first step of every engagement is scoping the actual question — that's included, not a separate paid step.

What does "source ledger" actually mean?

A plain, itemized list mapping every factual claim in the report to the exact source it came from — a filing, a live page, a dataset. You can hand it to your own team or an investor and they can check it themselves in minutes, not re-run the whole research.

Get a sample report before you commit to anything.

Send the question you'd actually want researched. You'll get a real scoped brief back — not a sales call. Covered by the Groundtruth Guarantee from the first engagement on.

Request a sample report

Groundtruth Research is a StillOS Digital Holdings service · This is a v0 offer — pricing and scope reflect our first real engagements, not a fixed rate card.