Inception

M&A

• 7Ridge acquired American Financial Exchange (electronic exchange).

• Deutsche Börse announced a €3.9B takeover offer for SimCorp (investment management software). The company also announced it will merge the Qontigo and ISS businesses.

• Excelra acquired BISC Global (bioinformatics and analytics consulting).

*transactions have been announced but may not be closed

Fundraising

• AiFlow (market research platform) raised an undisclosed amount in a Seed round.

• Axoni (data synchronization) raised $20M in a round led by EJF Ventures.

• Bobsled (data sharing) raised $24M in a Seed round led by .406 Ventures and a Series A led by Greycroft nd Madrona.

• Dasera (data security) raised $12M in a Series A led by Storm Ventures.

• Fluree (graph ledger database and pipeline toolset) raised $10M in a Series A led by SineWave Ventures.

• Measure Studio (social content analytics) raised a Seed round led by New York Angels.

• Optable (data collaboration and clean room) raised $20M in a Series A from Hearst Ventures, Brightspark Ventures, Desjardins Capital, Deloitte Ventures, and asterX.

• Pinecone (vector database) raised $100M at a $750M valuation in a Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz.

• Riscosity (enterprise data risk management) raised $7M in a round led by S3 Ventures.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

• Ben Abbate joined Singletrack as VP of Global Sales.

• Whitney Aerenson Pembroke joined J.P. Morgan as VP, Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships.

• Tim Bruno joined NewtonX as Chief Revenue Officer.

• Brennan Carley joined Zelig as a Senior Advisor.

• Elizabeth Coleman joined The Carlyle Group as Head of Alternative Data.

• Tommy Crouch joined FirstParty as Director, Client Services.

• Tom Donovan joined Paragon Intel as Sales Director.

• Brian Engelbert joined the Advisory Board of BuyerCaddy.

• Conor Feeney was promoted to Senior Data Scientist at Jupiter Asset Management.

• Aleca Hughes McPherson joined Highland Capital Partners as Head of Portfolio and Platform.

• Matt Kasle joined Experian Health as Director of Analytics.

• Lauren McGrath Hamblet joined Placer.ai as Account Executive, Strategic Accounts.

• Om Patri was promoted to Senior Manager, Data at Polar Asset Management.

• Michael Wood joined Kamba Data as a Strategic Advisor.

• Alex Woodgate was promoted to Managing Director, Capital Connect at J.P. Morgan.

Who’s Hiring

• Booking Holdings is hiring a Data Sharing Lead.

• Oceaneering is hiring a Director, Data Strategy & Architecture.

*New Company Alert*

SkySight Analytics was started by Greg Hood and Jeremy Harris. The company provides data and finance consulting services to SMBs and sell-side advisors. skysightanalytics.com

*New Offering Alert*

Eagle Alpha announced the release of Surveyor, a compliance focused product to support data buyers and data vendors with due diligence and communication capture. Buyers can now receive notifications when compliance data changes and access a platform that facilitates time stamped and private communications between buyers and vendors. More information can be found in the press release or on the company’s website.

*New Partnership Alert*

Alation partnered with Datarade’s Data Commerce Cloud (DCC) to enable Alation customers to access DCC’s network of over 300 commercial data-as-a-service companies by syncing DCC products to Alation Marketplaces. More info can be found in the announcement.

What I’m Reading

• Ideas for Investment Managers - LLMs for Buy-side Data Science Teams by Alex Izydorczyk on Substack.

• Be Alpha, My Friend, a new newsletter from Bill Stephenson.

• Top Challenges of Implementing Alternative Data in Investment Management by Qaisar Hasan and Stan Altshuller.

What I’m Listening To

• I caught 5 minutes of music this week. Backlog of podcasts, so will include next week.

Upcoming Events

*new events added since last newsletter

• *Low Key Data Happy Hour - May 2, Boston

• Amass Insights - Alternative Data Happy Hour - May 4, NYC

• Future of MLOps Tech Stack hosted by Differential Ventures, Greycroft, Norwest Venture Partners, and Primary Venture Partners - May 4, NYC

• HFM Billion Dollar Leaders Summit - May 8-9, Montauk

• ACG DealMAX (formerly Intergrowth) - May 8-10, Las Vegas

• The Knowledge Graph Conference - May 8-12, NYC

• OpenFin FinJS - May 9, NYC

• Battle of the Quants - May 10, NYC

• AWS Capital Markets Financial Data Forum - May 11, NYC

• WatersTechnology North American Financial Information Summit - May 16, NYC

• Maiden Century Data Partner Summit - May 16, NYC

• Generative NYC hosted by Lightspeed - May 16, NYC

• Spatial Data Science Conference - May 17-18, London

• BattleFin Discovery Day New York - May 17-18, NYC

• Neudata New York Summer Data Summit - June 1, NYC

• Datatechvibe Velocity Data and Analytics Summit - June 5-7, Dubai

• Eagle Alpha UNBOUND New York - June 6, NYC

• *FISD Alternative Data Council: Expert Networks Panel and Networking - June 7, NYC

• Substantive Research Unbundling Uncovered - June 14, NYC

• FinTech Connect North America - June 27, NYC