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S&P acquires With Intelligence

S&P acquires With Intelligence

Sunday Edition

Dan Entrup
October 19, 2025

Happy Sunday. A few weeks ago I wrote about Datasite’s roll-up strategy following acquisitions of Sourcescrub, Grata, and BlueFlame AI. It was one of my most read posts and drummed up some great convos about other private markets data and workflow players.

Roll-up

Not the fruit kind

itspronounceddata.beehiiv.com/p/roll-up

This past week, a big M&A deal was announced, with S&P Global announcing the acquisition of With Intelligence for $1.8B, marking a decisive move deeper into alternatives intelligence. With this acquisition, S&P is acquiring proprietary LP/GP, deal, fund, and real-asset data to accelerate its private markets footprint. Let’s explore the companies involved, why this deal matters, and who might be next.

Why This Deal Matters

At its core, this is a classic build the stack via M&A move, providing S&P with:

Scale & access to opaque data: With Intelligence brings coverage of ~3,000 institutional clients plus a dataset cutting across ~30K investors, ~30K managers, ~70K funds, and ~350K deals.
Filling a gap in S&P’s arsenal: S&P already has strong public markets, credit, ratings, indices, and private company data. But the alternatives/private markets vertical is less mature in its stack. This deal plugs gaps in LP/GP, benchmarks, fund flows, asset-level deal data and workflows.
Revenue & growth profile: With Intelligence is expected to contribute ~$130M of additional revenue in 2025, with organic ACV growth in the high-teens.

In short, S&P is executing a vertical play in private markets intelligence, layering a deep, proprietary data and analytics engine atop its existing platform, by acquiring not just a data vendor but a mini platform already built.

With Intelligence

Here’s a bit more about With Intelligence for those who enjoy some history or are not as familiar with the company.

With Intelligence was founded as Pageant Media in 1998 by Charlie Kerr who has remained CEO over this timeframe. In 2020, the company was acquired by Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), a London-based private equity firm. The company rebranded as With Intelligence in 2021.

In July 2023, Motive Partners, a New York-based financial technology sector-specialist investment firm, acquired a majority stake, valuing the company around £400M in a deal that saw continued support and investment from ICG and management.

Recent management hires have included Cornelia Andersson, who joined as Chief Product Officer in September 2024 after roles as Group Head of Sustainable Finance and Investing and Head of Investment Banking and Capital Markets at LSEG and SVP, Global Head of Research and Market Data at Blackstone.

Jonathan Goor joined as Head of Real Assets Strategy in November 2024 and was promoted to Chief Revenue Officer last month. He was previously Managing Director at AmploCo and Managing Director at Acuris’s Inframation and SparkSpread.

William Clifford joined as Head of Product in May 2024. He was previously Head of Product at Motive Partners’ innovation and value creation engine, Motive Create, and previously founded Tendrology.

Over the years, With Intelligence has been on a consistent acquisition spree. Below is a list of their acquisitions, with themes in financial trade media, specifically institutional investing, pensions, and real estate.

March 2025 - Acquired Realfin, a data platform for real assets intelligence. The company was founded in 2020 by Riz Malik and Stuart Allen and previously raised a pre-seed round.
February 2025 - Acquired The Deal, a provider of forward-looking analysis on M&A, PE, activism, and restructuring. The Deal was founded in 1999 by Bruce Wasserstein. With Intelligence acquired the company from Delinian (formerly Euromoney Institutional Investor), which acquired the business in December 2018 from TheStreet.com.
November 2024 - Acquired Sutton Place Strategies (SPS), a provider of deal data and analytics. The company was founded in 2009 by Nadim Malik. With Intelligence acquired the company from Bain & Company, which acquired the business in December 2020.
May 2024 - Acquired Highworth Research, a publisher of a single family office database. The company was founded in 2007 by Alastair Graham.
November 2023 - Acquired FolioMetrics, a CRM and research management solution for investment firms. The company was founded in 2012 by Paul Dell.
January 2023 - Acquired CAMRADATA, a data and analysis provider on investment managers and investment products. The company was founded in 2003 by Steven Butler. With Intelligence acquired the company from Punter Southall, which took a majority stake in the company in 2008.
August 2021 - Savvy Investor, a thought-leadership platform for institutional investors. The company was founded in 2013 by Andrew Perrins.
June 2021 - Acquired Pension Funds Online, a provider of financial and contact information for pension funds. The offering was first produced in print in 1978. With Intelligence acquired the company from Wilmington plc.
June 2021 - Acquired Hedge Fund Alert, a provider of exclusive news on the hedge fund industry. The publication was founded in 2000. With Intelligence acquired the company from Green Street, which acquired the business from Harrison Scott Publications in February 2020.
May 2020 - Acquired Eurekahedge, a data provider focused on the hedge fund industry. The company was founded in 2001. With Intelligence acquired the company from Mizuho, which acquired the business in 2011.
Other prior acquisitions include The Pension Bridge (2019), Institutional Investment Journal (2017), Hedge Fund Intelligence (2016), PIE (Property Investor Europe) (2015), PAM (Private Asset Management) (2012), and Wall Street Letter (2011).

S&P Global

Now let’s talk S&P (and no, not the sandwich place, though I hear it’s amazing). S&P needs no intro to this community (although did you know that their roots trace back to 1888 when James H. McGraw purchased the American Journal of Railway Appliances?), so let’s jump right into their recent news and M&A deals.

Martina Cheung was promoted to President & CEO of S&P Global, effective November 1, 2024. She joined the company in 2010 after serving as a Partner at Mitchell Madison Group. During Martina’s tenure as CEO, the company’s stock price has outperformed its peer group, staying close to flat (-1.63%) up to close the day of the With Intelligence announcement. This is compared to competition over the same period (11-1-2024 to 10-15-2025):

FactSet -37.51%
LSEG -18.22%
GlobalData -39.85%
Morningstar -32.67%
MSCI -3.78%

The company has been acquisitive with both some smaller tool tuck-ins and larger platforms. While not all inherently private markets focused, S&Ps recent acquisitions demonstrate a clear track record of acquiring both content and capability. I have a separate draft on content vs. capability that I plan to publish soon.

September 2025 - Acquired PriceMetrix, a provider of performance benchmarking and data-driven insights for the wealth management industry. PriceMetrix was founded in 2000 by Doug Trott and Patrick Kennedy. S&P acquired the company from McKinsey, which acquired the business in 2016. It will be part of S&P owned Crisil.
June 2025 - Acquired TeraHelix, a provider of advanced data modeling solutions. The company was founded in 2019 by Tasos Kontogiorgos, Suraj Shah, and Jack Steenkamp.
April 2025 - Acquired ORBCOMM’s AIS business, a provider of satellite data services used to track and monitor maritime vessels.
January 2025 - ProntoNLP, a natural language processing tool that improves extraction, structuring, and analysis of unstructured data. The company was founded in 2021 by Ronen Feldman. ProntoNLP previously raised a funding round led by Heroic Ventures.
May 2024 - Acquired World Hydrogen Leaders, a content and networking platform for executives across the hydrogen value chain. WHL was founded in 2018 by Nadim Chaudhry as part of Green Power Global. S&P acquired the company from Green Power Global.
February 2024 - Acquired Visible Alpha, a platform for analyst models, consensus content, and deep fundamentals and estimates data. Visible Alpha was founded in 2015 by Scott Rosen. The company previously raised $38M and was backed by a consortium of leading investment banks and research firms.
April 2023 - Acquired the APAC ex-Japan database from SCRIPTS Asia. This provided the company with comprehensive corporate of Asian corporate and investor events with transcription and translation. SCRIPTS Asia was founded in 2018 by Erik Abbott. The company previously raised $2.5M in a funding round led by Thirdstream Partners.
March 2023 - Acquired Tradenet, a provider of live vessel tracking and commodity information. The acquisition is part of S&P Global Commodity Insights
January 2023 - Acquired ChartIQ, a provider of financial charting tools. ChartIQ was founded in 2012 by Dan Schleifer and Terry Thorsen. S&P acquired the company from Cosaic.
January 2023 - Acquired TruSight Solutions, a provider of third-party vendor risk assessments. TruSight was founded in 2017 as an industry initiative by a consortium of leading financial services companies, including AmEx, BofA, JPM, Wells Fargo, and BNY Mellon.
December 2022 - Acquired Shades of Green, a provider of independent, research-based second part opinions of green, sustainability, and sustainability-linked financing frameworks and climate risk assessments. S&P acquired the company from the Center for International Climate Research (CICERO).
January 2022 - Acquired The Climate Service, a provider of climate risk analytics. The Climate Service was founded in 2017 by James McMahon and Terence Thompson. The company previously raised $3.8M in a Series A led by Persei Venture.
November 2020 - The big one. S&P announced a deal to acquire IHS Markit for $44B. The deal closed in 2022.

Through With Intelligence, the company acquires a platform with robust, unique content, and enablement of various workflows such as CRM. This gets combined with existing assets such as their deep private company data (content) and tools like iLevel and Ipreo (acquired via IHS Markit), which provide efficient workflow tools for LP/GP relationships and reporting, fundraising, and more.

The acquisition of With Intelligence is the clearest sign yet that S&P isn’t just buying data, but also assembling a differentiated content + capability stack. They’ve learned that in modern information markets, owning the dataset isn’t enough. You have to own the process by which it’s created, enriched, and consumed. That’s the real moat.

Who Could Be Next?

This deal puts competition in the spotlight. Who will make the next move? Who will be acquired next? Will the next few years be PE-sponsor or corporate strategic-backed?

It might be time to put up or shut up. Recent deals in the space include the following:

BlackRock acquired Preqin for £2.55B in a deal announced in June 2024.

Morningstar acquired Leveraged Commentary & Data (LCD) in 2022 and has owned private company data industry-darling, Pitchbook, since 2016. The company also acquired DealX (CMBS and CLO data) and Lumonic (private credit portfolio monitoring company) earlier in 2025.

But other transformative M&A from the big 4 financial info services companies… it’s light. FactSet has done some smaller deals, LSEG D&A and Bloomberg are quiet on private markets.

Here are some potential targets.

Debt Market Intelligence

9fin ($87.2M total raised, $50M Series B led by Highland Europe in 2024)
Octus (backed by Permira)

Digital Solutions & Platforms

Arch ($77.5M total raised, $52M Series B led by Oak HC/FT in 2025)
Juniper Square ($371M total raised, $130M Series D led by Ribbit Capital in 2025)

News, Analysis, Events, and Intelligence

Arizent (backed by Observer Capital)
PEI Group (backed by Bridgepoint Group)

Company Data, Screening, and Sourcing

CB Insights ($11.7M total raised, $10M Series A led by Pilot Growth Equity in 2015)
Crunchbase ($106.5M total raised, $50M Series D led by Alignment Growth in 2022)
Gain.pro (€9.6M total raised in 2022)
Harmonic ($30M total raised, $23M Series A led by Sozo Ventures in 2022)
Inven (€12.7M total raised, €11.2M Series A led by Vendep Capital and Ventech in 2025)

Portfolio Monitoring, Analytics, and Reporting

73 Strings ($65.1M total raised, $55M Series B led by Goldman Sachs in 2025)
Allvue (backed by Vista Equity Partners)
Cepres (Series A raised in 2017).
Chronograph, portfolio monitoring (raised $20M led by Summit Partners in 2022)

CRM

Affinity ($120M total raised, $80M Series C led by Menlo Ventures in 2021)
Altvia (backed by Marlin Equity Partners)
Datazoic (founder owned)
DealCloud (InTapp), deal CRM (IPO in 2021, $3.07B market cap as of 10-15 close).
Singletrack (backed by Accel-KKR)

Potential Next Acquirers

Clearwater Analytics (NYSE: CWAN) which recently acquired Enfusion (Investment management technology), Beacon Platform (modeling and risk analytics), and Blackstone Bistro (portfolio visualization software). While mainly public markets focused, some of these tools span both public and private side analytics and workflows.
Datasite, written about previously, has been the most active in the private markets space as of late, and seems to be on fire picking up great assets to round out the private markets investing workflow.
Hearst owned Fitch Group which owns CreditSights, Bixby, LevFin Insights, Capital Structure, and Covenant Review.
TA Associates which owns Green Street (commercial real estate intelligence), Apex Group (fund services), Precisely (data integration and enrichment), and Orion (wealthtech and financial advisor solutions provider). The firm previously invested and exited other financial service juggernauts, including BATS, CoreLogic, ICE, Intralinks, and ION.
ION Group which owns Acuris (content & analytics), Dealogic (content & analytics), and Fidessa (financial markets software).
SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ: SSNC) which owns Intralinks (VDR) and Tier1 (CRM).
New specialist PE firms such as 7RIDGE and Triple Private Equity.