M&A Clean Room Software, Enforced in Code
Clean-team access control for the gun-jumping and antitrust ethical-wall problem that arises when the buyer is a competitor. Clean Rooms is an add-on for the Growth and Pro plans, and custom on Enterprise.
How Clean Room enforcement works
A clean room only means something if the wall actually holds. In Anweshna the wall is enforced by the server on every request, not hidden in the interface.
Held apart
Clean-room documents and reports live in their own database schema, readable only by a dedicated database role and encrypted with a key of their own. The part of the platform that serves ordinary deal rooms has no access to that schema at all — the separation is a database permission, not a filter in the application. Only extracted text is kept, never the uploaded file.
Room roles
Every member holds a role in the room. A lead manages the room and releases output; counsel reads everything and releases output; the clean team uploads and screens documents; the deal team sees only what has been released to it. Someone who is not a member gets no indication that the room exists, and members accept the room's confidentiality terms before they enter.
The Release Airlock
Every screening result waits for a lead or counsel. A release to counsel is the full report. A release to the deal team carries scores, ratings and finding sentences only — no quotations, clause references or evidence — and is blocked if a scan finds an email address, an account or record number, or a name from the room's own blocked-terms list. Each release is recorded with who approved it and a hash of exactly what was released.
A verifiable audit log
Each room's events, refused access included, are written to a hash-chained log that the room can re-verify at any time; the database accepts new entries but not edits or deletions. Destroying a room deletes its documents, reports and releases and leaves a destruction certificate; the log is kept.
Traceability
Every Markdown, JSON, PDF and DOCX report downloaded from the platform is watermarked with who pulled it, in what role, and when.
This is the distinction from a virtual data room that simply hides folders in the UI: there, hiding is a display choice. Here, the server refuses the request, and the documents never appear in the member's listings.
What's inside a deal room
A deal room is the per-transaction workspace everything else is scoped to.
- Scoped documents and scoring — every document, analysis, and report assigned to a room stays inside that room, not shared across your whole account.
- Team roles — invite members into a specific deal room as analyst or viewer, so access matches who's actually working the deal.
- Clean rooms — for material the deal team must not see, use a clean room (the Clean Rooms add-on) instead of a deal room.
- Per-room industry ruleset — set a room to score against the M&A, aviation, financial-institution, or pharma rubric, and every document uploaded to it is scored against that ruleset automatically.
- Per-room audit trail — the room owner can review document access, downloads, and membership changes for that room. Pro plan and above.
Clean room software vs. clean room services
“M&A clean room” is used for two different things. One is a service: a consulting firm or neutral third party that receives sensitive data, does the analysis, and hands back an aggregated output, with the underlying material never reaching the buyer directly. The other is software that enforces the access wall so a client's own clean team can do the work.
Anweshna is the second, not the first. There is no consultant in the loop, no neutral party reviewing documents on your behalf, and no aggregated-output-only deliverable. Your clean team uses the platform; the platform enforces who can see what, on every request. If your situation requires a genuine independent third party between the buyer and the data, that is a services engagement and not what this is.
For the antitrust background — clean-team composition, what a clean-room protocol governs, gun-jumping, and the pre-closing waiting period — see the M&A clean room guide.
Deal rooms by plan
Deal room limits vary by plan — see pricing for current numbers and the full feature comparison. Clean rooms count toward the same room limit.
| Plan | Concurrent rooms | Per-room audit log | Clean Rooms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Growth | 5 | — | Add-on, $499/mo |
| Pro | 15 | Included | Add-on, $499/mo |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | Included | Custom |
Deal Rooms FAQ
What is a deal room in Anweshna?
A deal room is a per-transaction workspace: the documents, team members, and risk-scoring rules assigned to it are scoped to that one deal, not shared across your whole account. Each plan includes a set number of concurrent deal rooms.
What is the Anweshna Clean Rooms add-on?
A paid add-on for the Growth and Pro plans ($499 a month or $4,990 a year), custom on Enterprise. A clean room holds its material in a separate database schema with its own access role and encryption key, gives each member a room role, releases output only through a Release Airlock, and keeps a hash-chained audit log.
Can I control who sees which documents in a deal room?
Yes. Team members are invited into a specific deal room with a role — analyst or viewer — and only see the documents and analyses assigned to that room. For material the deal team must not see at all, use a clean room.
Can I view a deal room's audit log?
Per-room audit trails are available to the room owner on the Pro plan and above, showing document access, downloads, and membership changes for that room.
How many deal rooms do I get?
It depends on your plan. See the pricing page for current deal room limits and the full feature comparison.
What is an M&A clean room?
An M&A clean room is a controlled environment where only a designated clean team can see commercially sensitive material about a target, so that reviewing it during a pending merger cannot be characterised as coordination between competitors. In Anweshna, a clean room is the Clean Rooms add-on: its material is held in a separate database schema that the rest of the platform cannot read, and nothing reaches the deal team until a lead or counsel releases it.
Does Anweshna provide M&A clean room services?
Anweshna is software that enforces a clean room, not a clean-team services engagement. There is no consultant, no neutral third party reviewing documents on your behalf, and no aggregated-output-only deliverable. Your own clean team uses the platform; the platform enforces who can see what.
What is gun-jumping?
Gun-jumping is coordinating or combining two businesses before a merger is legally cleared to close — for example, sharing competitively sensitive information beyond what the transaction review requires. A clean room limits that exposure by confining sensitive material to a clean team that is walled off from the buyer's commercial decision-makers.