The US has 50 company registers, not one — and that's the prospecting story
The structural reality of US B2B prospecting is that the country never built a national company register. Each of the 50 states maintains its own Secretary of State filing — Delaware (the C-corp default), California (the LLC default), Texas, New York, Florida and the other 45 — with different schemas, different lookup interfaces, and different update cadences. There is no federal equivalent of Companies House or Handelsregister.
That fragmentation is why US B2B data has historically been an aggregator's game — D&B, Experian, and the modern wave (Apollo, ZoomInfo, Cognism) all monetise the work of stitching together state-by-state primary data plus secondary sources. AtlasForgeX does that stitching natively for any user who needs the underlying records.
Free 1-day trial01 //The five layers of US B2B data
US B2B prospecting works best when you stop looking for a single canonical source and start treating it as five layers, each contributing a different field.
~70% of Fortune 500 C-corps; Wyoming, Nevada, and South Dakota host most pass-through LLCs.UEI (Unique Entity Identifier), NAICS code, and points of contact in SAM.gov. Roughly 600,000 active entities.541511 (custom software), 333611 (turbine manufacturing), 523930 (investment advice). The standard cross-state filter for segmentation.02 //State concentration patterns
Which state file matters depends on where the entity actually operates, which is rarely where it's incorporated. Delaware C-corps don't operate in Delaware — they operate wherever their offices and customers are. AtlasForgeX cross-references the formation state (legal home) with the principal place of business (physical operations) to find the actual operating geography.
// California — the operations heavyweight
The world's fifth-largest economy taken alone. Tech in the Bay Area, entertainment in Los Angeles, agriculture in the Central Valley, biotech in San Diego. California's Secretary of State filing carries the California number distinct from the EIN, and the FTB (Franchise Tax Board) carries supplementary identifiers.
// Texas — diversification at scale
Houston for energy and petrochemicals, Dallas-Fort Worth for finance and telecom, Austin for tech and semiconductors, San Antonio for healthcare and military supply. Texas's franchise tax filing through the Texas Comptroller adds a useful revenue-band data point.
// New York — financial services and media
The financial services concentration on Manhattan plus the wider tri-state ecosystem. NY State's Department of State maintains the corporate filing; NY Department of Financial Services governs the regulated financial subset.
// Florida — services, real estate, healthcare
Miami's role as the Latin-America commercial gateway, Orlando's professional services and tourism economy, Tampa's growing financial-services cluster. Florida's Sunbiz portal is one of the most queryable state registries.
// Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina
The mid-tier industrial and services states. Stronger manufacturing presence than coastal states; less expensive operating environments; growing logistics-and-distribution clusters along the I-85 corridor through the Carolinas.
03 //The federal legal layer — CAN-SPAM and TCPA
// CAN-SPAM Act (email)
Federal statute since 2003. Permits unsolicited commercial email — there is no prior-opt-in requirement at the federal level for B2B.
Rules: accurate header information, non-deceptive subject lines, clear identification that the message is an advertisement, a physical postal address, a working opt-out honoured within 10 business days.
Penalties under the FTC schedule run to USD 53,088 per email for material violations.
// TCPA (voice + SMS)
Telephone Consumer Protection Act 1991 plus subsequent FCC rulings. Materially stricter than CAN-SPAM.
Automated or pre-recorded calls to mobile numbers require prior express consent regardless of B2B context. SMS to mobile numbers requires consent — no B2B carve-out.
Live person-to-person calls to corporate phone numbers are exempt from the Do Not Call registry (a consumer registry only).
04 //State privacy laws — fourteen and counting
As of 2026, fourteen US states have comprehensive consumer privacy laws in force or imminent. The interaction with B2B prospecting is uneven — California removed its B2B exemption in 2023, but most other states retain some form of B2B carve-out for business-contact information.
| State | Law | In force | B2B contact data |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | CCPA + CPRA | 2020 / 2023 | Covered (exemption ended 2023) |
| Virginia | VCDPA | 2023 | B2B carve-out |
| Colorado | CPA | 2023 | B2B carve-out |
| Connecticut | CTDPA | 2023 | B2B carve-out |
| Utah | UCPA | 2023 | B2B carve-out |
| Iowa | ICDPA | 2025 | B2B carve-out |
| Indiana | INCDPA | 2026 | B2B carve-out |
| Tennessee | TIPA | 2025 | B2B carve-out |
| Texas | TDPSA | 2024 | B2B carve-out |
| Oregon | OCPA | 2024 | B2B carve-out |
| Montana | MCDPA | 2024 | B2B carve-out |
| Delaware | DPDPA | 2025 | B2B carve-out |
| New Hampshire | NHDPA | 2025 | B2B carve-out |
| Florida | FDBR | 2024 | Limited scope |
Where a state covers B2B contact data, the basic obligations are: notice of categories collected, honour deletion requests, honour opt-out-of-sale requests, do not target sensitive personal information. AtlasForgeX processes locally and stores nothing centrally — the controller-of-record for any data is the user, not the tool.