Alternative or Emo Data?

Since last post we’ve seen 6 M&A deals, 4 funding rounds, 25 people moves & promotions, 5 roles, 3 articles, 2 podcasts, and 2 newly added upcoming events.

Deep-dive writeup on TA’s investment into PureSpectrum here with LinkedIn post here (likes appreciated).

Plus, last edition’s top clicked link.

Funding Round (Open)

My good friends at Brickroad are building something very cool in the liquid data space - automating how AI labs and agents (and eventually us alt data guys) source, evaluate and purchase training and inference data, with the aim of compressing procurement cycles from months to milliseconds.

They are wrapping up a $2M pre-seed. If you're an accredited investor and interested in learning more, reach out to Freeman Lewin at [email protected] or take a look at their deck here. Feel free to reach out to me for a direct intro as well.

M&A

• Gresham acquired S&P’s Enterprise Data Management business.

• iAltA acquired BridgeFT (wealth-tech APIs).

• Snowflake acquired Observe (AI-powered observability).

• Standard AI acquired Pathr.ai (AI-powered spatial intelligence).

• UserTesting acquired User Interviews (market research participant recruitment).

• Vanda (positioning data and macro insights) merged with Exante Data (macro analytics).

*Deals are announced but may not be closed.

Funding

• Flywheel (medical imaging data management and analysis) raised $25M in a round led by Novalis Lifesciences and 8VC.

• Nutritics (food data management) received an investment from Kester Capital.

• Protege (AI data platform) raised $30M in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.

• PureSpectrum (market research technology) received a strategic investment from TA Associates.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

• Chawntae Applegate was promoted to Head of Global Sales at Sago.

• Paul Bard joined CMG (Capital Markets Gateway) as Head of Fundamentals Data.

• Rahul Bhotika joined Lululemon as SVP, Data, AI Engineering, and AI Research.

• Braden Callahan joined YipitData as Head of Data Architecture.

• Jonathan Cheriff joined RIWI as VP of Sales.

• Katie Devlin joined Inovalon as SVP, Enterprise Data Strategy.

• Sam Dreyfuss joined Insight Partners as Senior Director, Data & AI.

• Joel Dudden was promoted to Head of Revenue at With Intelligence.

• Katrina Engelman joined LightBox as CMO.

• Xiaoping Feng was promoted to Partner, Head of Data and Tech at Sapphire Ventures.

• Paula Guridi Irujo was promoted to VP, EMEA at Inex One.

• Thomas Halliday joined Konovo as Chief Commercial Officer.

• Julie Harris joined Expana as CEO.

• Austin Hopp joined Balyasny as Investment Data Analyst.

• Adam Jolley joined Quest Mindshare as SVP, Revenue.

• Brett Kaluza was promoted to Chief Revenue Officer at PitchBook.

• Eddie Katz joined AlphaSense as Director, Financial Services.

• John Lepto joined Cloud Ratings as Chief Business Officer.

• Aaron Palmer joined Walr as EVP of Sales.

• Evan Sohn joined Revelio Labs as Managing Director.

• Melvin Tan joined Uzabase as Head of Asia Pacific Data Solutions.

• Harsh Tripathi joined Third Bridge as SVP, Strategy.

• Mark Trowbridge joined RavenPack as Chief Revenue Officer.

• Anna Tye joined Hg as Partner, Co-Head of Global Large Cap Software fund, Head of FinTech & Insurance North America.

• Alex Woloshyn was promoted to Principal, Data Science at Blue Owl Capital.

*may not have started roles, but roles are announced or updates provided online.