Hide and DeepSeek

That's so not raven

Author

Dan Entrup
February 03, 2025

Since last post we’ve seen 4 acquisitions, 10 funding rounds ($121.8M raised), 19 people moves & promotions, 6 roles ($238K average salary), 3 articles, 1 highlight, 2 podcasts, and 2 memes.

Check out my episode of the Waters Wavelength Podcast. Last night published The Sunday Edition with a recap of my past two weeks of travel for conferences. The Company We Keep will return this week.

I’m starting to work with advertisers as it helps fund the creation and maintenance of this newsletter. It is greatly appreciated if you could click their links and check out their offerings. This week is in partnership with Writer.

Writer RAG tool: build production-ready RAG apps in minutes

RAG in just a few lines of code? We’ve launched a predefined RAG tool on our developer platform, making it easy to bring your data into a Knowledge Graph and interact with it with AI. With a single API call, writer LLMs will intelligently call the RAG tool to chat with your data.

Integrated into Writer’s full-stack platform, it eliminates the need for complex vendor RAG setups, making it quick to build scalable, highly accurate AI workflows just by passing a graph ID of your data as a parameter to your RAG tool.

M&A

*Deals are announced but may not be closed.

Funding

  • Athenic AI (AI data analyst) raised $4.3M in a round led by BMW i Ventures.

  • Harmonya (product data) received an investment from Dunnhumby Ventures.

  • Jump (AI for financial advisors) raised $20M in a Series A led by Battery Ventures.

  • Kaiko (crypto market data and analytics) received an investment from Uggla Family Office.

  • Meteomatics (weather intelligence) raised $22M in a Series C led by Armira Growth.

  • Observo AI (AI data pipelines) raised $15M in a Seed round led by Felicis and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

  • OneVest (wealth management technology) raised $20M in a Series B led by Salesforce Ventures.

  • Paxton (AI-powered legal research) raised $22M in a Series A led by Unusual Ventures.

  • Savant (AI-powered analytics automation) raised $18.5M in a Series A led by Dell Technologies Capital.

  • TrustLogix (AI-powered data security) raised a Seed round led by Westwave Capital.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

powered by

  • Jake Beeman joined Quant Data Bureau as Chair of the Board and Code Willing as a Board Member.

  • Sheraz Bhatti was promoted to Director, Customer Success - Investors and Verticals at Similarweb.

  • Simon Brain joined Datagum as Head of Business Development and Partnerships.

  • Leighton Dellinger was promoted to Head of Legal and Corporate Secretary at Paxos.

  • Jose Fabre was promoted to Staff Analyst - Data Sourcing & Strategy at Man Group.

  • Tory Frame joined the Competition and Markets Authority as Senior Director of Strategic Insight, Analytics, and AI.

  • David Gelinas joined Babel Street as Director of Product Management.

  • Liz Grausam joined Statista as SVP, Americas.

  • Andrea Hagerman was promoted to Head of Data Sourcing and Vendor Operations at Chicago Trading Company.

  • Molly Just-Behr joined Databricks as Global Head of Public Sector.

  • Yvette Kosoy was promoted to Director, Senior Compliance Counsel at Balyasny Asset Management.

  • Magdalena Lis joined Lloyd’s Banking Group as Head of Responsible Development and Use of AI.

  • Sean McDonnell was promoted to VP, Data Analytics at Ariel Investments.

  • Matthew Nelson joined Vendelux as Head of Data Operations.

  • Katie Price was promoted to SVP, Global Head of Corporates at S&P Global.

  • Craig Richardson joined Harmonya as Enterprise Sales Director.

  • Steve Taylor joined Citi as Head of Data and Client Platforms.

  • Rachael Tucker joined Macrobond as Chief Data and Growth Officer.

  • Carolyn Weinberg joined BNY as Chief Solutions Innovation Officer.

Credit: Trung T. Phan

Weekly Highlight

One of the perks of writing my own newsletter is that I get to highlight great work I see from friends across the industry. Note, this is not a paid testimonial or ad. This week I bring your attention to Jon Neitzell, a good friend and mentor. Jon is Managing Partner of Anduril Partners and an active advisor to many innovative companies in the data & information services sector, including the FISD, an open standards effort of ~300 of the world’s largest asset managers and data businesses, SESAMm, Equity Data Science, RTI, ETR, Aiera, and previously Datavore (acquired by Above Data), Prattle (acquired by Liquidnet), and Kensho (acquired by S&P Global). Jon was previously a Portfolio Manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and then went on to be the firm’s Chief Data Officer for Fundamental Equities.

Anduril Partners + Arbor Advisory Group recently published a case study on how a performance beauty brand increased its valuation in 12 months with IR Analytics. You can view and download the PDF here or click the image below. If you’re in IR or at a PE firm helping manage portfolio companies, let me know and I’m happy to connect you with Jon.

Who’s Hiring

Check out the It’s Pronounced Data job board for full listings. This week’s additions are below.

*salaries only listed where provided by the company and may vary based on location and other factors. See links for specific salary details.

What I’m Reading

What I’m Listening To

Upcoming Events

*new events added since last newsletter

Views here are the author’s own and not of any employers or companies. The author may be compensated for pieces in this newsletter.