Analysis of 7 Data & Analytics M&A and Fundraising Deals - June 18-26, 2024
TL;DR - With Intelligence, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, Datos Insights, Norm AI, Safran, Lighthouse and Semrush provide us with a sudden rush of Data & Analytics deals
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June 26 - With Intelligence, the provider of investment intelligence for allocating, fundraising and business development, announced the sale of Captive Review, the specialist publication and event producer for those working in the captive insurance industry, to Newton Media.
Another month, another deal for Charlie Kerr’s With Intelligence.
Just one month after acquiring Highworth Research, (see our brief analysis of that deal and With Intelligence in the below link), With Intelligence has sold one of its oldest properties. Captive Review was founded by the old Pageant Media team 26 years ago.
Newton Media has a suite of Business-to-Business publications and events currently focused on Insurance and Intellectual Property, and seems a good home for the asset.
June 25 - Benchmark Mineral Intelligence announced the successful completion of its first major acquisition, Rho Motion, a leading energy transition data and market intelligence provider, for roughly $50m.
As expected, Spectrum Equity-backed Benchmark have begun making acquisitions, paying roughly $50m for Rho Motion.
Combined, with nearly 250 employees, Benchmark and Rho Motion form the world’s biggest platform for prices, data and market intelligence dedicated to the full breadth of critical mineral and energy transition supply chains.
Subscription-based Benchmark supplies minerals-related data for miners, battery makers, politicians and others. Rho Motion, founded in 2018, has long focused further downstream in the supply chain, tracking EV sales, battery installations, recycling, rare earth magnet production and related areas.
"Where Benchmark's coverage stops, Rho Motion's starts," said Simon Moores, Benchmark's CEO.
We discussed the impending likelihood of inorganic growth for Benchmark in our profile of the business in April this year:
It’s a perfect fit, and a deal that has long been in the offing. Benchmark CEO Simon Moores had been a Director and investor in Rho Motion since its founding in 2018. And Adam Panayi, Rho Motion’s Managing Director and Founder had left his role as Head of Benchmark’s consultancy business to start Rho Motion.
Indeed, on his LinkedIn, Simon Moores states that the “team that worked over two years to get the right deal done at the right time.”
Mark Behan at Kingswood LLP provided Corporate Finance advice to Benchmark.
June 25 - Datos Insights, a provider of data and advisory solutions to the financial services, insurance, and retail technology industries, announced the acquisition of Wise Insights, a research and data firm servicing leading bank wealth managers, trust companies and multi-family offices throughout the United States.
The Wealth Management Data & Analytics space has been busy in the last couple of weeks. Hot on the heels of Broadridge's acquisition of AdvisorTarget a few weeks ago, today Pamlico Capital-backed Datos Insights has acquired Wise Insights.
Wise provides benchmarking data from more than 130 Wealth Managers about profitability, productivity, growth (including sales and retention), fees, pricing and discounting practices, staffing, and outsourcing,
Datos Insights was formed in April 2022 through the merger of RBR, a provider of strategic research and data on banking automation, cards, payments, and retail technology, and Aite-Novarica Group (ANG), an advisory firm providing insights on technology, regulations, markets, and operations to banks, payments providers, insurers, and securities firms.
The combined entity rebranded as Datos Insights in June 2023. Pamlico Capital originally backed Aite-Novarica Group in July 2021.
June 25 - Safran, a French multinational aerospace and defense corporation, entered into exclusive discussions to acquire Preligens, a provider of geospatial artificial intelligence for aerospace, defense and governments, for EUR220m.
Formerly known as Earthcube, and backed by Ace Management, Definvest, 360 Capital and Tikehau Capital, Paris-based Preligens provides geospatial data & analytics to monitor areas of strategic military interest.
Yet another example of a high-value, niche Data & Analytics business using the low-cost imaging generated by Low Earth Orbit satellites.
One suspects that the French government may have had a hand in driving this deal to its conclusion…
Evercore provided Corporate Finance advice to Preligens.
June 25 - Norm Ai raises $27m Series A to expand AI-Driven regulatory compliance platform, led by Coatue, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Blackstone Innovations Investments, New York Life Ventures, Citi Ventures, TIAA Ventures, and Jefferson River Capital, the family office of Tony James, the former President and COO of Blackstone.
We’ve featured multiple M&A transactions and fundraisings in the Governance, Regulatory & Compliance Data & Analytics sector over the past month. It is a HOT space!
One-year-old Norm AI has an interesting angle. They claim:
Norm has built the first AI platform for converting regulations into computer code. The team of AI engineers and legal engineers developed a proprietary language to represent government regulations and corporate policies as decision trees that become executable computer programs by leveraging powerful large language models. These programs, called Regulatory AI Agents, automate compliance analyses to make them more efficient, comprehensive, and accurate. The Norm approach also sets the foundation for integrating AI more deeply into businesses by ensuring that AI-driven actions and content from generative systems adhere to policies through a Regulatory AI agent overlay.
The investors are a who’s who of the fintech VC world. It will be very interesting to watch Norm AI’s progress from here. Perhaps a profile from Asymmetrix is overdue! Message us if you are interested in seeing a more detailed analysis.
In the meantime, take a look at Bain Capital Venture’s analysis of the business and the sector.
June 20 - Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight), the leading commercial platform for the travel & hospitality industry, announced the acquisition of Berlin-based HQ revenue. This acquisition brings together two leading hospitality technology providers and will accelerate investment and innovation for existing HQ revenue and Lighthouse customers.
Lighthouse has made a series of acquisitions since Spectrum Equity invested $80m in the business in November 2021. (Their last deal, Stardekk, in February this year, added hotel management software to their suite of offerings.) This small bolt-on adds more data on Lighthouse’s core hotel market, plus a 10k+ user base.
June 18 - Semrush (NYSE: SEMR), an online visibility management SaaS platform, has belatedly announced that it acquired Datos in December 2023, and is now integrating its global clickstream data.
Do not confuse this Datos with the Datos Insights mentioned a few deals previously, O Best Beloved! This is very much a Marketing Data & Analytics transaction, not Wealth Management Data & Analytics.
Thanks to friend of Asymmetrix Ben Kolada of ICON Corporate Finance for flagging that the purchase price was listed in Semrush’s 10k. Semrush paid $13.856m for a 60% stake in the business, valuing the company at $23.1m.