Datawheel Launches OEC BotMarket: A Structured Dataset Hub That Gives AI Agents Access to Real Data

New platform from the team behind the Observatory of Economic Complexity addresses data reliability in AI agent workflows

Cambridge, MA — March 2026 — The Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), developed by Datawheel, today announced the launch of BotMarket, a structured dataset hub designed to provide AI agents with direct access to trusted, verified data via API.

As AI agents become increasingly integrated into analytical workflows, a critical gap has emerged: agents frequently generate outputs built on fabricated data. When tasked with producing trade analyses, economic reports, or demographic breakdowns, agents often fill data gaps with plausible but unverifiable figures drawn from training data rather than actual sources.

BotMarket addresses this by serving as the data layer between AI agents and reliable datasets. Agents query BotMarket's API, receive structured data from verified sources, and produce analysis that is transparent, reproducible, and grounded in real numbers.

"The models keep getting better at reasoning, but reasoning on bad data still produces bad results," said the BotMarket team at Datawheel. "We built BotMarket because we saw agents confidently generating trade statistics and economic indicators that didn't exist anywhere. The missing piece wasn't intelligence. It was data."

Available Datasets

BotMarket launches with datasets spanning international trade, economic complexity indices, demographics, labor markets, education, health, housing, governance, fiscal policy, productivity, skills, social indicators, and US Census data from the American Community Survey. Each dataset is structured, documented, and maintained by the team that has operated OEC's data infrastructure for over a decade.

How It Works

BotMarket integrates with any AI agent framework capable of making API calls, including LangChain, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK, and custom setups. A typical workflow involves an agent identifying its data needs, querying BotMarket, receiving structured JSON, and using that data to generate analysis, visualizations, or reports. Every output is traceable to a real dataset.

Built on a Decade of Data Infrastructure

BotMarket builds on the foundation of OEC, which originated as a research project at MIT's Collective Learning group and has since become one of the most widely used platforms for exploring international trade and economic data. OEC serves researchers, analysts, journalists, and policymakers worldwide. BotMarket extends this infrastructure to the growing ecosystem of AI agents and agentic applications.

Target Audience

BotMarket is designed for AI developers building agent-driven systems that require reliable data for analysis, as well as data scientists, economists, and quantitative analysts looking to integrate agent capabilities with trusted datasets.

Availability

BotMarket is live and accessible at botmarket.oec.world.

About Datawheel

Datawheel is a data science and AI company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Datawheel builds platforms that make complex data accessible, including the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). Learn more at datawheel.us.

Media Contact

David Anabalón | Marketing Lead

david@datawheel.us