Analysis of 8 Data & Analytics M&A and Fundraising Deals - September 3-11, 2024
TL;DR - Acquisitions by Vaisala, Moody's, Muck Rack, Smartkarma; Investments for Qualifyze, Retraced, Powerlytics, Cognitive Credit.
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September 11 - Vaisala acquires Speedwell Climate to help organizations mitigate weather-related financial risks.
Hot on the heels of the Aurora Energy Research news that we recently reported comes a completed deal in the Power Generation space.
25-year-old Speedwell Climate sits at the crossroads of Weather, Power Generation and Energy Trading Data & Analytics, providing high value data to participants in the market.
Listed Finnish industrial measurements and weather-focused Vaisala previously acquired AerisWeather in 2022 as part of a drive to grow its Data & Analytics business, although at the time AerisWeather only had $3.2m in revenues. In 2019 Vaisala also acquired Foreca’s professional business-to-business weather services. (And back in the mists of time in 2013, but still remembered by those of us involved, they acquired 3Tier and Second Wind Systems.)
Speedwell’s accounts show that they turned over GBP3.7m in 2023, up from GBP3.4m the previous year.
As this latest acquisition shows, building recurring revenue from Data & Analytics remains a strategic priority for Vaisala:
Speedwell was advised by Anna Faelten, Rob Morris, Harry Trafford, Qasim Mahmood, Toby Wills and Yingxuan Zheng at EY.
September 10 - Qualifyze, a supplier risk management technology provider to the Life Sciences industry, announced $54m in Series B funding from Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors HV Capital, HarbourVest Partners, H14 and Cherry Ventures.
Asymmetrix has not spent enough time writing about the Life Sciences / Healthcare market, despite the fact that it currently comprises around 5% of our dataset of Data & Analytics businesses.
Qualifyze enables companies in the Pharmaceuticals supply chain to adhere to regulatory standards and manufacturing best practices. In the process Qualifyze has built a database of about 3,000 suppliers to 1,200 customers, which sits at the core of the product.
In the words of Ryan Hinkle, Managing Director at Insight Partners, who led the investment for the firm:
“We see opportunity for Qualifyze to deepen its offering for the life sciences by building on top of the proprietary data they have collected over years, enabling use cases from predictive risk management to procurement. We also see lots of opportunity in the U.S., where Qualifyze already has clients but will be leaning into even more.”
Asymmetrix plans to write an in-depth piece on a Life Sciences Data & Analytics business soon. Let us know which company you would like us to focus on.
September 10 - Düsseldorf-based Retraced secures €15m Series A to make fashion supply chains more sustainable.
The garment industry is on the front line of the sustainability wars, squeezed between consumer demand for ethical products (and the repercussions for businesses who are exposed as exploitational (even if inadvertently) and government regulation.
It’s no surprise therefore that we have seen a flowering of Data & Analytics providers focused on helping businesses to overcome these issues. Asymmetrix is currently tracking 10+ competitors to Retraced.
The round was led by Partech with participation from previous investors Alante Capital, Alstin Capital, Samaipata, and F-Log Ventures.
This is a relatively young space and, at 4 years old, Retraced is almost a veteran - now into its third funding round. Asymmetrix expects to see high growth in the years to come as the new EU directives have an impact on procurement globally.
September 10 - Powerlytics has announced the completion of its latest funding round led by Curql Collective, Tribeca Early Stage Partners and existing investor Brewer Lane Ventures.
Powerlytics claims that its dataset provides:
Zero-friction income verification on 100% of US households;
Investable asset data on 100% of US households;
Complete financial statements on 100% of US businesses.
As you can imagine, this is powerful data for financial services companies looking to assess the creditworthiness of (or identify) potential clients, or for any other business looking to market to particular demographics.
It’s taken Powerlytics a long time to get here. Founded in 2011, they still only have 16 employees. We shall see whether or not this investment acts as a growth accelerant.
September 5 - Moody’s Corporation announced that it acquired Praedicat, a provider of casualty insurance analytics. The acquisition adds casualty and liability modeling to Moody’s range of solutions for the insurance industry.
Insurance requires high quality, granular Data & Analytics to enable accurate pricing. Praedicat’s focus is on catastrophe casualty risk modelling for exactly that purpose.
Of the tens of Property & Casualty Data & Analytics providers in the Asymmetrix dataset, Praedicat is one of the oldest independent companies, having launched in 2012. It was still a relatively small business when acquired, but its models are widely respected in the industry.
Publicly-listed Moody’s made a much bigger investment in the P&C D&A space in 2021 when it acquired RMS for $2bn. This smaller bolt-on brings additional Data and Analytics capabilities to the platform, specifically adding to Moody’s casualty offering, as opposed to RMS’s property focus.
September 4 - Cognitive Credit, a London, UK-based provider of data and analytics software for corporate credit markets, raised $10m in Series B funding.
Asymmetrix has been tracking Cognitive Credit since their £6m raise in 2021. High-yield debt Data & Analytics is a highly valuable space, and anyone offering alternative datasets is worth monitoring closely.
The latest round was led by ETFS Capital, with participation from XTX Ventures. Fitch Ventures and Pentech had previously invested in the business.
Consolidators in the market like ION Group, Reorg, Moody’s and Fitch will undoubtedly be keeping a close eye on Cognitive Credit for any sign that they may consider selling in future.
September 3 - Muck Rack, public relations and communications management software provider, announced that it acquired Keyhole, the social listening and analytics platform that provides real-time insights on social media data.
Susquehanna Growth Equity invested $180m in PR-focused Software, Data & Analytics provider Muck Rack in 2022. Until this acquisition they had used the cash to expand organically.
Muck Rack bought Keyhole to fill a gap in their product suite:
We know that integrated social listening is one of the primary features our customers want us to provide, and adding Keyhole’s technology to Muck Rack is the first step to filling that need.
Muck Rack is a high-growth business and well worth tracking.
September 3 - Smartkarma, a global investment intelligence platform, has announced the acquisition of Helixtap, a global commodities alternative data and insights platform.
When we see a Price Reporting Agency deal we sit up and take notice. Particularly when the acquirer is not one of the usual suspects.
Helixtap provides proprietary data, analyses and forecasts for the rubber, latex and automotive markets.
According to Farah Miller, CEO, Helixtap:
“Helixtap has built a strong moat in its data collection methodology. We collect, assess and process data at a farm-gate level daily, and validate it across 50+ sources. This is cross-referenced across an 8+ year old time series to generate forecasts with 90%+ accuracy. Leveraging this extensive database, Helixtap has developed the world’s only independent physical rubber price index, providing more accurate and representative pricing for the rubber market.”
The press release suggests that Helixtap is also eyeing entry into the broader automotive and EV sectors using the Smartkarma platform.
Smartkarma was set up to be a decentralised research platform, paying independent equity research analysts a commission for content they publish on the platform, akin to Seeking Alpha. They have raised money from VCs including Sequoia India, Wavemaker Partners and Jungle Ventures.
Smartkarma’s strategy has evolved over time towards providing proprietary data as well as equity research.
Helixtap is Smartkarma’s first acquisition. We can only assume that Helixtap turned down the overtures of other PRAs to join up with Smartkarma, so it must have been a compelling offer for Farah Miller and the team.