From Establishing the First Commercial Credit Ratings to Powering Today's AI Economy, Dun & Bradstreet Celebrates 185 Years of Innovation

The company that once counted Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley among its credit reporters continues to bring confidence to the global economy

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., July 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Few companies have contributed to the growth of American commerce like Dun & Bradstreet. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Dun & Bradstreet is marking 185 years of enabling businesses and financial institutions to make more confident decisions, build stronger relationships, and drive economic growth.

Founded in 1841 during America's westward expansion, Dun & Bradstreet pioneered a new way for businesses to assess creditworthiness, manage risk, and extend commerce into new markets. At a time when businesses relied on local knowledge and personal relationships, the company established a broader framework for evaluating business reputation and financial standing across expanding markets. Since then, the company has continued to evolve to support the needs of an increasingly connected global economy.

"We have been innovating for businesses since 1841," said Stephen Tulenko, CEO of Dun & Bradstreet. "Dun & Bradstreet pioneered the first standardized commercial credit rating system, facilitating commerce and growth across the country, intelligence that became one of the world's first business databases and laid the foundation for 185 years of innovation."

The company's earliest innovation was a nationwide network of correspondents who reported on businesses and the individuals running them. Their observations were captured in handwritten ledgers, creating a structured view of companies and the people behind them. Among these correspondents were four future U.S. presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley. Those handwritten volumes are preserved today in the R.G. Dun & Company Credit Report Volumes at Harvard Business School's Baker Library. As the network grew, those individual reports were standardized into published reference books and commercial credit ratings that merchants and lenders across the country came to depend on to do business at a distance.

As commerce became more complex and interconnected through computing, Dun & Bradstreet continued to standardize how businesses evaluated risk and trust. In 1963, the company introduced the D-U-N-S^® Number, a unique identifier for businesses, similar to a Social Security Number, that helped organizations connect and identify companies across systems, databases and borders.

Today, Dun & Bradstreet gives companies the verified business identity and grounding context they need to use AI safely and at scale. Anchored by the D-U-N-S^® Number and powered by the D&B Commercial Graph^™, the company helps organizations understand corporate relationships and ensures AI is working from accurate, verified information about real businesses.

"For 185 years, the most important questions in commerce haven't changed: who am I doing business with and can my business rely on them enough to move forward?" said Tulenko. "What's changed is who needs the answer. Increasingly, it isn't just people making decisions, it's AI. We provide the verified identity and context that let businesses and their agents act with confidence."

From pioneering standardized commercial credit ratings in the 1840s to grounding today's agentic economy, Dun & Bradstreet now helps power AI workflows across leading platforms including Anthropic, AWS, Cursor, Databricks, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft 365 Copilot, OpenAI, Salesforce, Snowflake, and more. The company's role has not changed since 1841: providing the trusted information that lets commerce move and, in doing so, helping power the economic growth that has followed.

About Dun & Bradstreet

Dun & Bradstreet provides the verified commercial identity foundation for enterprises to deploy AI at scale. The company originated the D-U-N-S^® Number in 1963, now the global standard for identifying commercial entities. Anchored by this identifier, the D&B Commercial Graph^™ structures and connects business identity consistently across systems, enabling AI to operate on accurate, validated data. Since 1841, businesses of every size have relied on Dun & Bradstreet to navigate change and accelerate growth. For more information, visit www.dnb.com.

SOURCE Dun & Bradstreet, Inc.