Operational status

How Kernel determines whether an entity is active, absorbed, out of business, or undetermined

Operational status answers a practical question: is this company still trading in the market your team cares about?

Kernel does not treat website liveness as a simple active-or-inactive flag. Dead companies can keep websites online, and active companies can have stale, broken, or redirected domains. Acquisitions also need care: one acquired brand may continue selling under its own name, another may be folded into the parent, and another may be shut down.

How Kernel determines status

Kernel judges the go-to-market reality, not just the legal shell. It checks whether the company sells or supports products today under its own brand, whether the brand has been retired into a parent, and whether operations have stopped.

The research uses company websites, redirects, parked-domain signals, closure news, business registries, insolvency records, and local-language evidence where relevant. When signals conflict or the evidence is not strong enough, Kernel returns Undetermined instead of guessing.

Operational status is resolved before headcount and revenue. If an entity is out of business, downstream values should not make it look like a healthy operating company. When configured, an out-of-business account can also route to the Delete inoperational review queue.

Key data points

Label	Description
Operational status	Whether the entity is active, absorbed, out of business, or undetermined.
Reasoning	Explanation of the evidence behind the status.

There is no separate confidence field for operational status. Undetermined is the uncertainty value when the evidence is incomplete, stale, or contradictory.

Status values

Status	Meaning
Active	The company operates today under its own brand, even if it is owned by another company.
Absorbed	The original brand is retired, but its operations or capabilities continue under a parent brand.
Out of business	Operations have ceased and there is no meaningful continuation under the original brand or a parent brand.
Undetermined	Kernel cannot classify the status confidently from the available evidence.

See the Kernel Account object reference for field types and help text.