Longest Drive Competition

Covid got me last week so posting late for what might be the biggest week of activity since starting this newsletter. Since last post we’ve seen 7 acquisitions, a whopping 22 fundraising rounds, 21 people moves & promotions, 1 new fund, 1 new industry alliance, 4 articles, 10 roles, and 3 newly added upcoming events.

M&A

• Benchmark Mineral Intelligence acquired Rho Motion (energy transition market intelligence).

• BlackRock acquired Preqin (private markets data) for £2.55B.

• Bullhorn acquired Textkernel (sourcing AI).

• Chambers and Partners acquired Lamp House Strategy (law firm data and analytics).

• Datos Insights acquired Wise Insights (research and data for wealth management).

• Fractal (AI and analytics) merged with Eugenie.ai (emissions intelligence).

• Similarweb acquired 42matters (app intelligence).

*Deals are announced but may not be closed.

Fundraising

• Authentica Solutions (data integration and intelligence solutions for education) raised $6.2M in a round led by Owl Ventures.

• BlueFlame AI (generative AI for investment management) raised $5M in a Series A.

• Bounce Watch (startup intelligence and scouting) raised a Pre-Seed round.

• CData (data connectivity) raised $350M in a Strategic Growth round led by Warburg Pincus.

• Clay (GTM data enrichment) raised $46M in a Series B led by Meritech Capital.

• Climate X (climate risk intelligence) raised $18M in a Series A led by GV (Google Ventures).

• Cloudian (AI data lake platform) raised $23M in a Growth round led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.

• Crossover Markets (digital asset exchange) raised $12M in a Series A led by Illuminate Financial and DRW Venture Capital.

• DealCircle (M&A deal match-making) received an investment from Round2 Capital.

• FairNow (AI governance) raised $3.5M in a Seed round led by Somen Mondal and Shaun Ricci.

• GIST Impact (impact data) received an investment from UBS Next.

• Hoodie Analytics (cannabis intelligence) raised $5M in a Series A led by Measure 8 Partners.

• Illumex (generative semantic fabric) raised $13M in a Seed round led by Cardumen Capital, Amdocs Ventures, and Samsung Ventures.

• LiveEO (satellite data) raised €25M in a Series B led by NordicNinja and DeepTech & Climate Fonds.

• Micruity (fintech infrastructure) raised $5M in a round from investors including Prudential, State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), and TIAA Ventures.

• Odaseva (data security) raised $54M in a Series C led by Silver Lake Waterman.

• Onehouse (data lakehouse) raised $35M in a Series B led by Craft Ventures.

• Orby AI (generative process automation) raised $30M in a Series A led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Wing VC, and WndrCo.

• SoSo Value (crypto investment research platform) raised $4.15M in a Seed round led by HongShan, GSR Markets, Alumni Ventures, CoinSummer Labs, and One Piece Labs.

• Stability AI (open-access AI models) raised a round from investors including Greycroft, Coatue, Sound Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• Synspective (satellite data) raised ¥7B (~$43.5M) in a Series C led by Japan Growth Capital Investment Corporation.

• Upward (AI-powered research companion) raised $3M in a Pre-Seed round.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

Powered in partnership with Live Data Technologies

• Prem Akkaraju joined Stability AI as CEO.

• Rebecca Alexander Jamner joined Alvarez & Marsal as Senior Director, Account Management Strategy.

• Nawar Alsaadi joined the Advisory Board of Neural Alpha.

• Martina Cheung was appointed President & CEO of S&P Global effective November 1, 2024.

• Jason Cook joined Windfall as SVP of Business Development.

• Kevin Coop joined Definitive Healthcare as CEO.

• Michael Everaert joined Tradition as Global Head of E-Commerce & Digitalisation.

• Derek Fang joined Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) as Product Strategy & Development Manager.

• David Gelinas joined the Advisory Board of StreetFeeds.

• Jasper Menkus joined Brevan Howard as Alpha Innovation Strategist.

• Sean Parker joined Stability AI’s Board of Directors as Executive Chair.

• Atul Pawar joined Clear Street as Chief Risk Officer.

• Charles Porter joined PartnerOne as Chief Information Officer.

• Ana Price joined Prolific as Head of Client Research Services.

• Nicole Schnuck joined Aux Insights as COO.

• Dines Selvig was promoted to Head of Data Science at Matter.

• Akul Singhal joined Man Group in Data Sourcing and Strategy.

• Tim Tebow joined GOVO Venture Partners as a Partner.

• Bill Watson joined Millennium as AI Scientist.

• John White joined the Advisory Board of Coeur Data.

• Lizzy Williams joined YipitData as Counsel & Director of Compliance.

New Firm Alert

Taproot Management is a new hedge fund started by David Lin, former Tamridge (Millennium), Glenview, and Rhone Group. The firm is a multi-analyst investment platform that combining fundamental long-short investors with advanced technology and quantitative investing methods. Taproot expects to start trading next year with $500M according to a Bloomberg article.

New Industry Alliance

The Dataset Providers Alliance brings together a diverse range of AI data licensing providers and IP owners, including those specializing in music, voice, text, video, and images. By establishing a unified voice for dataset providers, the alliance advocates for the interests of rights holders and works to create a sustainable and equitable ecosystem for the licensing of intellectual property content in the AI and ML industries. The founding members of the DPA include Rightsify, Global Copyright Exchange (GCX), vAIsual, Calliope Networks, ado, Datarade, and Pixta AI.

The DPA's mission is to:

• Promote transparency and standardization in the licensing of intellectual property content for AI and ML datasets.

• Educate stakeholders on the importance of responsible and ethical data sourcing and usage practices.

• Facilitate dialogue and collaboration between dataset providers, AI/ML researchers, and industry partners.

• Advocate for the rights and interests of content creators and rights holders in the AI and ML ecosystem.

• Encourage innovation and the development of cutting-edge AI and ML technologies while ensuring the protection of intellectual property rights.

What I’m Reading

• Want to build a data business? Here’s the 7 ways to collect data by Anand Sanwal.

• 7 enterprise data strategy trends by John Edwards.

• Is 2026 The Year AI Runs Out of Training Data? by Ray Fernandez.

• Global Fintech 2024: Prudence, Profits and Growth by BCG and QED Investors.

Who’s Hiring

• Antenna is hiring a Strategic Account Director ($140K - $200K).

• Boston Consulting Group is hiring a Insights Director, Center for Geopolitics.

• Chronograph is hiring a Product Manager, Data Extraction & Machine Learning ($180K - $200K).

• Cybersyn is hiring a Analytics Engineer ($125K - $175K).

• In-Q-Tel is hiring a Partner ($223K - $291K).

• LLR Partners is hiring a Senior Associate, FinTech, Investment Team.

• Microsoft is hiring a Head of Programs – Data Insights Strategy Leader ($146K - $219K).

• PDT Partners is hiring a Platform Engineer ($195K - $225K).

• Princeton University is hiring a Executive Director, Artificial Intelligence Lab.

• The World Bank is hiring a Chief Data Technology Officer.

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

Upcoming Events

*new events added since last newsletter

• Knowledge & Information Management, Research & Analysis (KIMRA) - Generative AI Conference, July 3, London

• Applied AI Strategies for Private Markets - Happy Hour, July 10, NYC

• *M&(AI) Happy Hour by Grata, M&A Science, and Freshfields, July 11, NYC

• People Data Labs Q2 Happy Hour Hang, July 17, NYC

• The Quirk’s Event, July 17-18, NYC

• Boston Fintech Week, September 16-20, Boston

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

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

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

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