Cambridge Analytica
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Cambridge Analytica was a British political data-analytics firm founded in 2014 as an offshoot of the SCL Group. It combined data mining and psychographic profiling to build voter-targeting models for political campaigns. The firm is best known for harvesting personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users — collected via a personality quiz app developed by researcher Aleksandr Kogan — which it used to build psychographic profiles for clients including Donald Trump's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and Ted Cruz's campaign.
02 / Cambridge Analytica FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
The Facebook-data scandal damaged the company’s reputation and was followed by client losses and rising legal costs, leaving the business unable to continue.
The Facebook-data scandal damaged the company’s reputation.
Client losses and rising legal costs left the business unable to continue.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Cambridge Analytica was founded.
- Bankruptcy
Cambridge Analytica entered bankruptcy.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Faced an international media investigation in March 2018 (Guardian, New York Times, Channel 4 undercover reporting) over its harvesting of Facebook user data and secretive campaign tactics, prompting multiple official investigations in the U.S. and Europe.
- 02
Lost virtually all of its customers and suppliers as the scandal unfolded, while facing mounting legal fees.
- 03
Ceased all operations effective May 2, 2018; parent company SCL Elections Ltd began bankruptcy proceedings for Cambridge Analytica and its U.S. affiliates and moved to apply for insolvency in the U.K.
- 04
No reliable disclosed figure exists for the realized financial loss on the wind-down; reported figures concern the 87 million affected Facebook users, not a loss amount.