9fin raising money at $500m valuation, and 11 other Data & Analytics M&A and Fundraising transactions - October 27 - November 1, 2024
TL;DR - Funding for 9fin, Point74, Brightwave, Reflexivity, Aignostics, Armis; Acquisitions for Montel, nCino, Causeway Technologies, Carta, Factset; Divestment for Fiscalnote.
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November 1 - Mubadala and KKR among groups that have held talks with UK data firm 9fin - Financial Times.
The FT broke the unsurprising news on Friday that Debt Capital Markets Data & Analytics provider 9fin is in talks with financial sponsors about selling a stake in the business.
Interestingly, they quote a $500m valuation for the business.
9fin’s 2023 Annual Accounts states that the firm grew by
Increasing its team size throughout Europe and the USA as well as meeting client data needs through differing verticals including leveraged finance, distressed debt, structured finance (CLOs), private credit and ESG.
From 2022 to 2023 the number of employees grew from 63 to 120, and employee and director costs grew from £5.6m to £12.3m. These costs outweighed revenues of £3.2m and £7.2m.
The number of associated members on LinkedIn has now reached 267, and one imagines that revenues have more than doubled accordingly.
This makes the $500m EV a high revenue multiple, well in excess of the 13x forward revenue number achieved by Preqin earlier this year.
It’s unclear what the structure of any deal would look like - how much of the business the existing shareholders are looking to sell, for example.
9fin had previously raised $23m in December 2022 from Spark Capital with participation from existing investors Redalpine, AI Seed, Seedcamp, 500 Startups, and Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital.
As stated initially, this news is unsurprising, because a) VC investors need exits, and b) 9fin is an attractive opportunity for larger investors seeking growth opportunities. If 9fin continues on its current trajectory then a multi-billion dollar valuation in the next five to ten years is probable.
October 31 - FiscalNote, a provider of policy and global intelligence, announced the divestiture of its South Korean subsidiary, Aicel Technologies, Inc., to a South Korea based-group consisting of Aicel’s current Chief Executive Officer and lead executive as well as a third-party institutional equity investor for $9.65m.
NYSE-listed Government Data & Analytics provider FiscalNote has an excellent M&A track record, having grown to $109m in ARR by Q2 FY24 partly through acquisitions like CQ, Roll Call, Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly. Aicel would seem to be one deal that didn’t quite work out, and the two have decided to part ways.
Aicel is an alternative data company based in Seoul, South Korea that provides proprietary alpha-capturing datasets and extracts unique value and actionable insights to drive critical and timely business solutions for global financial markets. The company’s key customers included Korean entities and operated primarily with a focus on the Korean market. Because of the distinct nature of Aicel’s offerings, its operations have been separate from other FiscalNote teams, and its products have not been bundled with other FiscalNote offerings. FiscalNote will continue to serve customers in the Korea market through its separate portfolio of policy, global intelligence, and advisory offerings.
Asymmetrix is tracking over 100 Data & Analytics businesses in East Asia, including Aicel.
October 31 - The Riverside Company, a global investment firm focused on the smaller end of the middle market, has announced that Montel has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of SKM Market Predictor, a provider of analysis and advisory services for the Nordic power and renewables markets.
Founded in Trondheim, Norway, in 2003 through a management buyout from the SKM Group, SKM Market Predictor provides analysis and advisory services for the Nordic power and renewables markets. The company’s offering revolves around its web-based platform SYSPOWER, which includes forecasting and analytics tools for traders, analysts, portfolio managers and production planners. In addition to its fundamental models, SKM also offers services including investment analysis, arbitrage assistance, risk management and policy services as well as training and education.
This is the fourth acquisition Energy and Electricity Market Data & Analytics provider Montel have made since Riverside backed them in June 2022. Previously they acquired EnAppSys in January 2023, Energy Brainpool and Qwatt in January 2024.
This was not a large deal - SKM has only 16 employees.
Ketil Schjetne and Carl Henrik Svarstad of Alpha Corporate Finance provided Riverside and Montel with corporate finance advice.
October 30 - nCino, Inc., provider of banking solutions, announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire UK-based financial regulatory and verification platform, FullCircl, for £135m.
Asymmetrix has been a follower of the FullCircl story ever since DueDil launched in 2010. DueDil’s freemium model was great for users who wanted to dig into UK companies, but didn’t work financially for the business itself.
In August 2021, the business was merged with Artesian Solutions in a deal which was ‘the only option the board had due to “lack of funding”’. By that point, DueDil had raised $53.4m in funding. Artesian, founded in 2006, had likewise raised $15.9m of funding.
In March 2022 Artesian:DueDil rebranded as FullFircl, and in August 2023 the business acquired regulatory compliance provider W2 Global Data Solutions.
Kudos to FullCircl CEO Andrew Yates, who led Artesian and then FullCircl on the entire journey from 2006 to 2024. His heartfelt statement this week is worth a read.
nCino and FullCircl already had a partnership to integrate FullCircl’s Customer Lifecycle Intelligence and nCino’s cloud-based Banking Operating System. Ultimately they have chosen to make that relationship permanent.
Investors including Augmentum, Octopus Investments, Notion Capital will be delighted with the result.
October 30 - FPE Capital announced that it has led a buyout of Point74, a leading Food Lifecycle Management software provider to the food manufacturing sector.
We mentioned FPE Capital back in May when they invested in Vanda Research.
This time around FPE have invested in privately-owned Food Lifecycle Management Software/Data & Analytics business, Point74.
Founded in 2007, Point74 provides food manufacturing companies with food and ingredients Data & Analytics to enable them to create commercially viable and compliant products.
Asymmetrix expects to see accelerated growth for Point74 under FPE’s guidance.
Ultimately Point74 could be a good bolt-on for Five Arrows-backed Expana (formerly Mintec) or New Mountain/Endicott-owned Datassential.
October 29 - Construction technology provider Causeway Technologies has acquired Buchanan Computing, a provider of permanent traffic engineering and highways management solutions.
Although Causeway is primarily a SaaS provider, Buchanan sits on a huge cache of UK road safety and collision data. This data has potential uses not just in Causeway’s core infrastructure and construction sectors, but also in insurance and mobility. It will be interesting to see how Causeway makes use of the asset going forwards.
Five Arrows invested £120m for a significant minority stake in Causeway in June 2021. And the business has made multiple acquisitions since FAPI’s investment, including asset management software provider Yotta, workforce competency provider Reference Point, and digital road management provider one.network (from Bridgepoint).
CEO Phil Brown has been in charge of Causeway since 1999, and it has now reached $146m of revenue, according to ZoomInfo. The timing would seem right for a further liquidity event in the not too distant future.
October 29 - Brightwave, an AI financial research platform, announced the close of its $15m Series A funding round, led by Decibel Partners with participation from OMERS Ventures.
We have covered multiple financial Data & Analytics providers over the past year, most notably AlphaSense.
There’s a new batch of AI-driven providers coming up fast, one of which is Brightwave.
This round brings Brightwave’s total funding to $21m following an oversubscribed seed round in June. In addition to its impressive fundraising, Brightwave has achieved 4x revenue growth in the four months since the announcement of its seed funding.
At the core of the Brightwave platform is a proprietary knowledge graph constructed from high-signal sources including SEC filings, earnings call transcripts, breaking news, and public internet content, that describes the structure of global markets in granular detail. The Brightwave knowledge graph includes data on hundreds of factors such as supply chain relationships, M&A and governance changes as well as long-tail factors including expedited regulatory approvals, intellectual property litigation, cybersecurity events, and more.
Asymmetrix will continue to monitor Brightwave and their competitors as they proliferate, grow and, inevitably, consolidate.
October 29 - Reflexivity (formerly Toggle AI), a leading provider of innovative artificial intelligence solutions for the investment industry, announced a $30m Series B fundraising round led by Greycroft and Interactive Brokers. Additional participation included renowned hedge fund fund managers, Stanley Druckenmiller and Greg Coffey, as well as General Catalyst and SoftBank LatAm.
And here’s one of Brightwave’s competitors.
We covered Reflexivity (formerly Toggle AI) in detail back in June:
We highlighted back then that Interactive Brokers were a data partner - and now they are an investor. Will they take the next step at some point and acquire the business?
October 29 - Carta, the fund administration platform, announced it has acquired Tactyc, provider of forecasting and planning to private funds.
After the hiccup that caused Carta to close their secondary market platform, CartaX, earlier this year, this deal is evidence of Carta doubling down on their core strategy of serving private companies and their investors.
Tactyc provides funds with FP&A planning and forecasting Software, Data & Analytics. Their valuations dataset enables clients to assess and benchmark investments.
This impressive statistic jumped out from the press release:
With only a three person team, they’ve scaled Tactyc to multiple millions of ARR and hundreds of happy customers.
Investors in Tactyc’s $1.5m November 2002 seed round MaC Venture Capital and 4DX Ventures will doubtless be delighted with the outcome.
October 29 - Aignostics, a pathology insights provider, announced that it has raised $34m in Series B financing led by ATHOS, with investments from Mayo Clinic and growth financing from HTGF, alongside support from existing investors Wellington Partners, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, CARMA Fund, and VC Fonds Technologie managed by IBB Ventures.
Founded in 2018, Aignostics’ Data & Analytics products support drug discovery, translational research, clinical trials, and CDx development across multiple therapeutic areas, and has now raised over $55m.
Aignostics competes with other AI-driven biological and medical Data & Analytics providers such as Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs, in what is a highly valuable sector.
Large Pharmaceutical Data & Analytics players such as Norstella and Clarivate will doubtless be sharpening their pencils as they consider which AI-driven companies to acquire to enable them to compete most effectively.
October 28 - FactSet, a Financial Data & Analytics provider, announced it has agreed to acquire Irwin, an investor relations and capital markets solution for public companies and their advisors.
Irwin is more of a CRM platform for investor relations (IR Win - see what they did there?) than a Data & Analytics business, but FactSet is most definitely the latter, so it’s worth reporting here.
The two companies had announced a partnership in September 2023, so this is a natural evolution of that relationship.
The deal is a result for Irwin’s investors, including K1. In their deal announcement, K1 state that:
Since K1's initial investment in 2021, Irwin grew revenue by 4x by introducing new products such as Irwin IQ, expanding into the European market, and securing key partnerships with groups such as FactSet and New York Stock Exchange.
October 28 – Armis, the cyber exposure management & security company, announced the close of a $200m Series D round, increasing its valuation to a new high of $4.2bn. Armis’ latest funding round was led by investors General Catalyst and Alkeon Capital, along with existing investors Brookfield Growth and Georgian.
When financial sponsors ask Asymmetrix which sub-sector of Data & Analytics is particularly interesting, Cyber Security is high on the list.
Armis is a great example of why.
Founded in 2015, the company’s jewel in the crown is “the Armis collective AI-powered Asset Intelligence Engine [which] monitors billions of assets world-wide in order to identify cyber risk patterns and behaviors.”
Armis:
Announced in August 2024 that it had passed $200m in ARR - doubling ARR in the previous 18 months;
Has raised its valuation from $2bn in their last investment round in February 2021 to $4.2bn in October 2024. When Insight and Capital G invested in January 2020 the valuation was $1.1bn.
The press release also hints 1) that Armis will look for more acquisition opportunities, and 2) an IPO is in the offing.
Armis are already active dealmakers, purchasing Silk Security for $150m in April, and CTCI in February for $20m.
Armis’ cap table now includes General Catalyst, Alkeon Capital, Insight Partners, CapitalG, Georgian, Brookfield Growth, and One Equity Partners.