When we began publishing more of our research publicly and introduced the Diligence Stack in January, we were testing whether a wider group of technology executives and investors would value direct access to our work. The response gave us a reason to build a more complete research product around it.
Research built to inform the decisions in front of you
Today we are introducing the next step in that work. We are opening CS Atlas to current subscribers as a soft launch included with every active subscription.
Atlas is a research environment built around the full body of work Creative Strategies produces, including research that extends deeper and wider than what we publish on Substack. Subscribers can ask Atlas a question and receive an answer grounded only in our research and analysis. Each response shows the Creative Strategies work behind the answer and provides direct access to the supporting reports, data, or models included with the subscription.
Atlas is designed for the work that follows reading. A subscriber can pressure-test a market assumption or examine how our view of a company has changed through several earnings cycles. The same research path can follow a technical change through the companies and markets it affects. This shortens the distance between a current question and an evidence-based judgment while preserving the research trail.
Why Creative Strategies
A research agent inherits the quality of the research behind it. That is where CS Atlas begins.
Creative Strategies has worked inside the technology industry since 1969. That history gives us a long record of how platform shifts develop and which patterns tend to repeat. It provides the foundation for how we map markets and evaluate the companies positioned within them. Our analysts combine that historical perspective and deep industry experience with direct exposure to the decisions shaping the industry today. Having worked through every major technology cycle since our founding, Creative Strategies is now relied on by many of the world’s leading technology companies for independent research and market insight.
Our analysts are in the rooms where companies explain product roadmaps and defend the assumptions behind them. We attend launches and analyst briefings, then spend time with management in smaller sessions. The work continues after the event as we track those claims through subsequent earnings cycles and test them against reported results and our broader technical and competitive analysis. Over time, this creates a record of how priorities shift and whether management’s confidence is supported by results. It also shows where a vendor has sustained an advantage. Atlas makes the publishable portion of that work searchable and source-linked, with the latest research and commentary carried into every answer.
That company-level work becomes more valuable when placed inside our broader view of the industry. Creative Strategies covers the technology stack from silicon through adoption. We can follow a change in semiconductor architecture through the systems that use it, into the software economics it reshapes, and out to how customers adopt it. Atlas connects those layers so subscribers can test what management says against the underlying technology and determine whether the economics support adoption. The coverage map below shows the research areas that feed that analysis.
How subscribers can use the research in CS Atlas
Earnings notes: Our earnings work focuses on what each quarter tells us about the core companies we cover. We compare reported results with our models, explain where our conviction changed or held, and identify the evidence we will watch through the next earnings cycle. We provide research rather than stock ratings or stock picks.
Timely news analysis: When an announcement changes a company’s strategy or market opportunity, we place it inside our longer-running research and explain which assumptions should change.
Key event takeaways: Our analysts attend product launches and briefings with company leadership. The coverage connects each announcement to the company’s technology roadmap and competitive position, then identifies the adoption evidence that should follow.
Commentary from management meetings: When company leadership adds context we can publish, we explain how it changes our reading of the company and add that evidence to the Atlas research record.
The Creative Strategies research archive: Atlas connects current questions to our accumulated company and market work. Subscribers can trace how our analysis developed over time and, where maintained models are included with their access, inspect the assumptions behind the answer.
Every Atlas answer is grounded exclusively in Creative Strategies research and shows the supporting sources. Subscribers can see how the conclusion was formed and open the underlying work to continue the analysis from the evidence.
Atlas becomes more valuable as our research record grows. New reports add current evidence, while the accumulated archive makes it possible to compare today’s claims with what companies said and did in prior cycles. We will continue expanding those connections and the ways subscribers can work with them.
How to start
All subscribers with a currently active subscription can log in to CS Atlas here using the email tied to their subscription. Start with a current question and follow the source links into the supporting research. The soft launch also gives subscribers access to our expanded fall event coverage as our analysts move through the industry calendar.
All current subscribers will remain grandfathered into the Landmark research tier at their existing price for as long as their subscription stays active. After the soft launch, Landmark will be priced at $500 per month or $5,000 per year. Technology vendors and institutional clients can also access Meridian, which includes expanded data and model dashboards, or Horizon, which includes our currently maintained core models and new models as they are released. Contact us to discuss those tiers or multi-seat institutional access.
We designed Atlas to make Creative Strategies research easier to use when a decision depends on understanding what changed and how the effects move across the technology stack. The supporting evidence remains attached to the judgment so subscribers can inspect the reasoning and continue the work.
We appreciate your interest in our research.