Indicted

Since last post we’ve seen 3 acquisitions, 12 funding rounds, 13 people moves & promotions, 1 new company launch, 1 bonkers legal, regulatory & compliance matter, 6 articles, 5 roles, 2 newly added upcoming events, and 3 memes (Themes: consulting, Zoom meetings, Shark Tank). Also, enjoy this reel: Say Yes To The Vest.

About Last Night (Week)

Billiard’s continued Wednesday at Jac’s on Bond, this time joined by Zach McClure (best data recruiter in the game) and Peter Dorsey (best cloud data guy in the game). Score is now 5-2 in me vs. Jason Taylor. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Thursday was up in Greenwich for breakfast with a good friend and mentor, Jon Neitzell of Anduril Partners, then up the avenue to hear about former Refinitv exec Lars Asplund’s new expert-based research and knowledge sharing platform, Seersite. Took a drive down to Larchmont for a great sandwich at Stanz (highly recommend) with Eric Satler, an M&A leader from IAC turned roll-up strategy focus.

In the week ahead, I’ll be at Ethan Aaron’s Low-Key Data Happy Hour (The OG) on Wednesday.

M&A

• Dotmatics acquired Virscidian (scientific analytics and data).

• Surmount acquired Quantbase (automated investing).

• Salesforce acquired Zoomin (unstructured data management).

*Deals are announced but may not be closed.

Fundraising

• Bloks (VC AI-platform) raised $1.5M in a Seed round led by Storytime Capital and Mistral Ventures.

• Crisp (retail data platform) raised $72M in a Series B.

• Desia (AI for investment professionals) raised $3.3M in a Pre-Seed round led by Dig Ventures.

• GenLogs (freight intelligence) raised $6M in a Seed round led by Autotech Ventures and Steel Atlas.

• Geox (real estate analytics and imagery) raised $19M in a Series A led by Flashpoint Venture Capital.

• Koios (social listening for investment) raised $5M in a Seed round.

• Mako AI (AI investment associate) raised $1.55M in a Seed round led by Khosla Ventures.

• Observe (AI-powered observability) raised $145M in a Series B led by Evolution Equity Partners and Madrona Ventures.

• Quorum (unified data platform for advertising) raised $2M in a Seed round.

• Sequentia Biotech (bioinformatics and data analysis) raised €10M in a round led by Seventure Partners and EIC Fund.

• Tetrix (AI for capital allocation) raised $5M in a Seed round led by Innovation Ventures.

• Zenlytic (self-serve BI platform) raised $9M in a Series A led by M13.

New Company Alerts

Mako AI emerged from stealth providing an AI Investment Associate to supercharge complex research, analysis, and drafting with AI agents built to tap into a firm's knowledge. The company was founded by Danny Goldman (prior Bain & Co.), Shivaal Roy (prior Glean, Scale AI), and William Peng (prior Glean, C3 AI). The company also announced a $1.55M Seed round led by Khosla Ventures.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

Powered in partnership with Live Data Technologies. Who else is changing jobs? Get the latest data for the companies that matter most to you for free: http://www.livedatatechnologies.com/trial

• Cornelia Andersson joined With Intelligence as Chief Product Officer.

• Gemma Buchan was promoted to Global Head of Research Content Acquisition at Bloomberg.

• Ben Challice joined Pirum as President & Chief Strategy Officer.

• James Corrigan joined GoldenSource as CEO.

• Amy Dafnis joined Rokos Capital Management as Data Scout.

• Carmen Day joined InnovateMR as VP, Global Operations.

• Michael Finnegan was promoted to CEO at Eagle Alpha.

• Nick Greenland joined Axyon AI as SVP, Business Development.

• Katie Gross was promoted to President at Suzy.

• Mark Hale joined Pirum as CEO.

• Gary Kearns joined Squirro as Chairman of the Board.

• Shane Price was promoted to COO at People Data Labs.

• David Werner joined Carbon Arc as Head of Sales & Business Development.

Legal, Regulatory & Compliance

• The FIA has banned cursing in F1?!?!?!

*Nothing in this section should be construed as an opinion of the author. This is just to highlight news and articles related to data privacy, legal, regulatory, and compliance matters.

What I’m Reading

• Bloomberg’s 7 Powers & Why the Terminal dominates financial markets in a new Substack newsletter, The Terminalist.

• What I learned from Steve Cohen at Point72 by Thomas Li.

• Data Monetization Trends: Insights From 1000 Organizations by Doug Laney.

• The Growing Importance of Data Monetization in the Age of AI by Thani Shamsi.

• All Companies Are Data Companies: Collecting & Leveraging Everyday Employee Data for Organizational Insights by Isaac Esseku.

• The Giant Hedge Fund That Hates Risk and Still Wins by Peter Rudegeair.

Who’s Hiring

• American Express is hiring a VP, Frontier Machine Learning and Customer Insights ($185K - $275K).

• Brightwave is hiring a Software Engineer - AI & Machine Learning ($150K - $300K).

• National Hockey League is hiring a Director, Research - Innovation & Growth Strategy ($125K - $150K).

• Old Well Labs is hiring a Data Operations Lead.

• Takeda is hiring a Head of Data Strategy and Innovation ($205K - $322K).

*salaries only listed where provided by the company. See links for specific salary details.

Upcoming Events

*new events added since last newsletter

• *Low-Key Data Happy Hour, October 2, NYC

• Open Source Data Summit, October 2, Virtual

• Eagle Alpha Data Week, October 7-11, NYC

• The Market Research Event, October 8-10, Orlando

• Eagle Alpha UNBOUND Alternative Data Conference, October 9, NYC

• Web Data Extract Summit, October 9-10, Austin

• Boston Fintech Week, October 14-18, Boston

• Insight Innovation Exchange (IIEX) AI, October 15-16, Virtual

• BattleFin Corporate Discovery Day, October 15-16, Chicago

• StockTwits Stocktoberfest, October 20-22, Coronado, CA

• Battle of the Quants, October 23, London

• Beryl Elites Alternative Investments & Data Revolution, October 28-29, NYC

• Neudata Paris Data Day for Investors, October 30, Paris

• *Substantive Research Unbundling Uncovered, November 6, London

• Data Disrupt, June 4-5 2025, NYC

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