Leading Indicator

Knew my dental industry experience would come into play

Author

Dan Entrup
March 24, 2025

h/t AHL

Since last post we’ve seen 5 acquisitions, 8 funding rounds ($188M raised), 1 survey, 11 people moves & promotions, 1 partnership research piece, 6 roles ($202K average salary), 2 articles, 2 legal & regulatory matters, 1 new economic indicator, and 3 newly added upcoming events.

A Word From Our Sponsor

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  • OdinUltra’s high-confidence ticker list has correctly predicted 85%+ of all revenue beats vs. consensus over the last 9 years of historical data

  • A well known independent alternative data platform ranks OdinUltra’s revenue forecast accuracy in the top 3 of all data providers for 65% of all tickers

OdinUltra Details:

  • Forecasted metrics: Revenue, adjusted gross income, adjusted EBITDA, accompanied with confidence measures

  • Coverage: 1,300+ US companies and aggregated industry, sector, and total market forecasts

  • Horizon: Live and dynamic fundamentals for next fiscal quarter 40+ trading days prior to reporting; updated daily

  • Historical data: 2016 - present

  • Data Sources: Including fundamental data (e.g., financial statements), 2) factual data (e.g., non-panel alternative data) 3) ecosystem data (e.g., complex web of correlations / drivers of a companies' fundamentals) 4) market data.

OdinUltra is a product of Big Data Federation. BDF was founded in 2015 by Pouya Taaghol, who was previously CTO for the Home Networking Business at Cisco and CTO of the Mobile Wireless Group at Intel.

M&A

Had to, it was just too perfect this week

*Deals are announced but may not be closed.

Funding

  • Brain.space (brain data) raised $11M in a Series A led by led by Toyota Ventures.

  • Dataminr (real-time event detection) raised $85M from NightDragon and HSBC.

  • Nimblemind.ai (health data infrastructure platform) raised $2.5M in a round led by Bread & Butter Ventures.

  • Occuspace (occupancy and spatial analytics) raised $6M in a Series A led by Lewis & Clark Ventures.

  • Orion (data security) raised $6M in a Seed round led by Pico Venture Partners and FXP.

  • Rerun (data stack for physical AI) raised $17M in a Seed round led by Point Nine.

  • Silicon Data (compute market intelligence) raised $4.7M in a Seed round led by DRW and Jump Trading.

Deal Of The Week

Carbon Arc emerged from stealth with $56M in funding to launch the world’s first real-time insights exchange, providing businesses and the AI community with seamless intelligence and structured, model-ready data. The funding was led by Liberty City Ventures, with participation from K5 Global, Raptor Group, and Wasserman Media Group: firms at the forefront of the future of media, sports & entertainment, and finance. Carbon Arc is led by Kirk McKeown who previously led proprietary research at Point72 and Glenview Capital.

My Thoughts & Commentary

Aside from some of the obvious things around access to a ton of new datasets, mapping capabilities, and advanced insights, Carbon Arc is changing the commercial model, meeting the needs of may insights and operating teams who have been priced-out of purchasing datasets due to inflexible licensing models. So many people have been willing to pay for data for specific use cases, but the only option available from the data vendor community was 6-figure annual subscriptions. Carbon Arc users pay by consumption and have easy catalog access for discovery of pre-mapped, integrated datasets.

Kirk might also be the smartest person in the insights industry. Have lunch with him and you’ll learn and discuss more in an hour than an entire college semester-long course. With Marc Barbar recently promoted to President, Dinesh Malav as Head of Engineering, and Katherine Bjorkman recently joining as Director of Insights, the team is led by stellar builders and operators in the decision intelligence space.

For more information on the fundraise, check out the press release here.

Survey Request

It’s the new reality - customers want to receive the data they purchased directly within the cloud platforms they use, like Snowflake, Databricks, Google Cloud, Azure, AWS and many more. While sharing data via S3 or SFTP is still common, it puts the burden of data integration on the customer. My friends at Monda launched a study: The State of Data Sharing 2025. Join data CTOs and tech executives from leading data providers across the globe: Share your insights on data sharing & data delivery and be the first one to receive benchmark results. To participate in the study (only takes 6 minutes), check out the link here.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

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Partnership Corner

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

Special Event

My friends at PostSig have opened up a few last seats for Pulse on Data - a private NYC luncheon for capital markets leaders shaping the future of data strategy.

This isn’t a panel. It’s not a pitch. It’s a handpicked room of senior professionals - from hedge funds, asset managers, and fintech - gathering to compare notes, challenge assumptions, and level-up how they approach vendor relationships and post-signature performance.

📅 Tuesday, March 25, 2025 | 12:00–1:30 PM

📍 Hudson Yards, NYC (details shared upon confirmation)

Featured Session: I’ll be sharing thoughts on the data landscape with Chris Petrescu of CP Capital: → What’s actually driving change in 2025 → Where spend is shifting (and why) → How high-performing teams are getting ahead. We’ll also have a group discussion on AI trends, vendor complexity, and future-proofing your market data strategy.

Why attend? Because staying ahead requires more than just keeping up. This is a chance to hear from peers solving the same data challenges you are - and to walk away with fresh insight, sharper strategies, and real clarity on what’s next.

Space is very limited. If you’re a data buyer or strategist interested in attending, please apply to attend here.

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.