The Fate of Ophelia

Delayed post this week, I’ll blame the AWS outage. Also, I had to take a quick trip to Paris. Saw the Louvre and picked up some jewelry 😉

Welcome to my many new subscribers. A bunch of you signed up from my post earlier in the week on S&P’s acquisition of With Intelligence. Below is the standard weekly post. Occasionally write up on big transactions in the industry and a massive market map (existing readers, I promise, it’s almost done for realz).

Since last post we’ve seen 3 mergers & acquisitions, 10 funding rounds, 2 new companies, 15 people moves & promotions, 5 roles, 7 articles, 1 podcast, and 1 newly added upcoming event.

Resources

• Deal Tracker for full M&A and funding rounds.

• Job Board for full listings. This week’s additions are below.

M&A

• Inveniam acquired Storj (distributed cloud platform). PR

• Omni acquired Explo (embedded analytics). PR

• S&P Global acquired With Intelligence (private markets intelligence). PR

*Deals are announced but may not be closed.

Funding

• Augment (private market investing platform) raised $12M in a Series A led by Builders VC.

• Bridge (private markets operating system) raised $5.1M in a Seed round led by Thicket Ventures.

• Dialogue AI (AI-powered customer research) raised $6M in a Seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• Estuary (real-time data platform) raised $17M in a Series A led by M13.

• Finster AI (AI for financial professionals) raised $10M in a Series A led by FinTech Collective.

• Northsea (AI-powered survey platform) raised €660K in a round led by CapitalT.

• PortX (data integration platform for banks) raised a strategic growth round backed by Allied Solutions and the American Bankers Association.

• Streetbeat (AI-powered intelligence platform for financial professionals) raised $15M in a Series A led by CDP Venture Capital.

• Strella (AI-powered customer research) raised $14M in a Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

• Trove AI (AI for private equity) raised $7.1M in a Seed round led by Menlo Ventures.

New Company Alerts

Dialogue AI is a new AI-powered customer research platform, combining multiple workflows and capabilities into a vertically-integrated offering. Capabilities include AI-powered video interviews that can conduct hundreds of interviews at once, a global participant network, and synthesis with sentiment analysis, pattern detection, and fact checking. The company was founded by Benjamin Lo (prior Nextdoor, Snap), Justin Hoang (prior Nextdoor, Reddit), and Hubert Chen (prior Nextdoor, Reddit). The company announced a $6M Seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Seven Stars, Uncommon Projects, The Tornante Company, and angels. Check out more in fundraise announcement here.

Maywood is an AI-driven investment banking automation platform, powering CIM creation, buyer list building, due diligence, financial modeling, and client sourcing. The company was founded by Drake Goodman (prior Blackstone), Kent Goodman (prior BCG), and Esteban Vizcaino.

People Moves, Promotions, and Appointments

• Ross Allen joined Rimes as Head of APAC.

• Bill Blythe joined Rimes as Global Head of Sales, Enterprise Data Management.

• Rainbow Chik joined Connor, Clark & Lunn as Head of Investment Data Insight.

• Melanie Courtright joined Sago as Chief Strategy Officer.

• Peter Davio joined proSapient as CTO.

• Eli Goodman was appointed SVP of Product Solutions at Semrush.

• Dallas Li joined Qube Research & Technologies as Data Sourcing Engineer.

• Matthew Michaletz joined BluWave as Senior Director, Account Management.

• John Nathenson was promoted to EVP, North America at Catalytics Data International.

• Kevin Nutter joined Citadel as COO, Data.

• Caraline Pellatt joined the Advisory Board of Glacier Network.

• Ana Price was promoted to VP of Supply at Prolific.

• Tim Sanders was promoted to Chief Innovation Officer at G2.

• Aabhas Sharma joined Hebbia as CTO.

• Wendy Turner-Williams joined University of Maryland Global Campus as Global Head of Data & AI.

*may not have started roles, but roles are announced or updates provided online.

Who’s Hiring

• CB Insights is hiring a VP, Data Product and Operations ($250K - $275K).

• Insights Association is hiring a CEO.

• MarketAxess is hiring a Head of Transformation Office ($200K - $275K).

• Semrush is hiring a Data Strategy Consultant, North America.

• The Boston Red Sox are hiring a Business Strategy and Data Analyst.

*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

• How to Monetize Your Data by Suraj Srinivasan, Robin Seibert, and Mohammed Aaser.

• Skepticism, Early Trends & an Early Leader in AI-for-Hedge Funds Race by Alex Izydorczyk.

• AI (Still) Flunks Wall Street’s Analyst Test by Matt Robinson.

• 1.9 Years: What Short CDO Tenure Says About Your Organisation by David Reed.

• The Potential of Data Collaboration Can Redefine How We Think About Competition by Lauren Wetzel.

• AI Might Be Wrong, a new newsletter (with a great name) by Jeremy Leung.

• Inside the AI startups reinventing consulting: 'It's not as good as McKinsey, but it's instant' by Lakshmi Varanasi.

What I’m Listening To

• The System2 Podcast episode featuring Chris Petrescu of CP Capital in conversation with Matei Zatreanu.

• The Life of a Showgirl (#swiftie)

Upcoming Events

*new events added since last newsletter

• The Private Markets AI Summit, Oct 28, NYC

• Beryl Elites Alternative Investments & Data Revolution, Nov 3-4, NYC

• *Substantive Research Unbundling Uncovered, Nov 5, London

• World of DaaS Summit, May 7, 2026, Washington D.C.

Favor

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