🏦 What's next in the $18bn Private Markets Data & Analytics sector? - Asymmetrix Newsletter #67
More! More focus, more integration, more data.
In this week’s guest-authored insight, veteran of Private Equity, Venture Capital and Data & Analytics Jared Bochner has provided his thoughts on the future of Private Markets Data & Analytics, a sector with a TAM estimated to be $18bn by 2030. We thank Jared for taking the time to put together a truly insightful piece.
In other news, Reuters reports that legal AI provider Harvey AI is raising over $250m in new funding from Kleiner Perkins, Coatue and Sequoia at a $5bn valuation. See the “Interesting Content” section at the end for an insight into Harvey’s current position from Business Insider, and a market map on Litigation Tech from Legal Tech Fund.
Last week there were 7 disclosed acquisitions, with a total estimated EV of $354m. And 10 investments were announced, with a total estimated EV of $1.23bn.
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📈 Acquisition and Investment activity - April 05 - April 11, 2025
There were 7 disclosed acquisitions, with a total estimated EV of $354m.
10 investments were announced, with a total estimated EV of $1.23bn.
If you would like to have access to Asymmetrix’s underlying data via our subscription product, contact us directly at a.boden@asymmetrixintelligence.com
🏢 What’s Next for Private Markets Data?
The private markets sector has experienced remarkable growth over the past two decades, leading to a surge in data companies catering to this market. As is to be expected, investment firms and data conglomerates have taken notice and invested significant capital in these businesses.
BlackRock’s monumental acquisition of Preqin in 2024 underscored the attractiveness of private markets data businesses and the belief that private markets have become an integral part of the broader financial markets.
As private markets continues to expand, the private markets data vertical will continue to mature in tandem. We can anticipate product enhancements, better data, and of course, increased investment and M&A activity, among other developments that are afoot.
So, what are some recent developments? Where are we today? What can we expect in the coming years?
To contextualize the discussion below, it is important to distinguish between two categories of private markets data providers:
Firmographic / Fundraising / M&A data
Fund / GP / LP data
A helpful overview of these categories:
The trends and developments happening among private markets data providers can be summarized with one word: more.
More Strategic Strategics
S&P Global has long had a srategy to build (or buy) more products focused on the private markets. Indeed, CapIQ already counts many private equity funds as clients. The company also has data partnerships with Crunchbase and Preqin, which it reportedly tried to acquire last year. Though S&P lost the Preqin sweepstakes to BlackRock, there are still a few attractive acquisition targets in the space, including Crunchbase and CB Insights. The latter, which was for sale in 2023 but ultimately did not trade, provides fundraising and transaction data as well as high quality research on emerging tech trends, which is also synergistic with S&P’s 451 Research. Money Market Directories (MMD), a little-known S&P product providing data on institutional investors’ fund investments, may be critical as a cornerstone of a future private markets data product.
Bloomberg has bought very few companies relative to other information services strategics, so it comes as no surprise that they have begun building a private markets-focused product internally. The move highlights the gradual convergence of public and private markets and Bloomberg’s recognition that to properly serve its clients - despite them being primarily public market investors - it will soon need to level up its private markets products. The company has hired around this effort - shout out to my former boss, Dave Lowery, now Senior Product Manager & Private Markets Specialist at Bloomberg - and looks to be taking a partnerships-first approach.
The Financial Times is not a traditional information services strategic as S&P, Bloomberg and others are. Nevertheless, The FT counts several data businesses in its product portfolio, including MandateWire, which tracks institutional investor RFPs and future investment plans. Its core news product and accompanying newsletters, such as Lex, Due Diligence and FundFire, are popular among private markets professionals. A further foray into private markets data products via acquisition or investment from its venture arm would thus be reasonable, especially given the built in distribution available via legacy media properties.
AlphaSense has not made a major foray into private markets data yet but has pioneered bringing unstructured data to investment professionals via expert call transcripts and research reports. Marrying these products with private company and transaction data, adjacent datasets like technographic data, and broadening the scope of information available on the platform would position the company well to compete with Pitchbook. With several key building blocks in place, its north star should be automating the first several hours of manual desktop research done by analysts and associates when researching investment opportunities. AlphaSense has proven itself aggressive and ambitious; I am excited to see what is in store.
More Integration…
…with portfolio management tools: Blackrock’s thesis in acquiring Preqin was the opportunity to integrate Preqin fund data into Aladdin / eFront workflows to provide clients with a “whole portfolio” view as private market investing becomes a more critical component of institutional portfolios.
…with CRMs: Intapp DealCloud’s acquisition of firmographic data provider Delphai in 2024 was a response to the demands of private funds for CRM tools that integrate external data more smoothly with their internal data. Jason Miller’s Foresight Data is purpose-built for integrating third party data into its CRM and workflow platform for private funds.
…with other data providers: The market for private company and M&A data providers is multi-vended, with many clients subscribing to 2, 3 or even 4 providers to ensure no deal falls through the cracks and no company details are missed. A tool that provides access to multiple data sources that enables users to build the most robust profile of potential investment targets - a la Clay - would save analysts and associates time. Startup anyone?
Bottom line - data is not to be siloed.
More Data
Dealmaking is a relationship game. Investor relations and M&A professionals alike rely on close relationships with bankers, advisors, and executives to raise capital and close deals. Products like Ren Systems and Equilar ExecAtlas are increasingly leveraged to manage key relationships with LPs and investment targets. As more of the mundane work at financial services firms is automated over time, investment professionals will focus more time on parts of their jobs that cannot (and should not) be automated - relationship building - and look to invest in workflow tools to manage engagement with their network. AI tools can enhance these efforts and proactively identify opportunities to strengthen relationships and build new ones.
As private markets have matured, investment firms have carved out specialties and niches where they have strong networks, operating expertise and unique ability to manage risks, whether in geographic focus, specific investment stages or sectors (shoutout to the folks at Endicott Capital). In tandem, niche data providers have launched to serve niche-focused firms. In the private company and transaction data market, there is a long tail of small providers (<$10m revenue) focusing on specific countries (e.g., myfrenchstartup), regions (e.g., TTR Data) or sub-sectors (e.g., HealthTech Alpha). These businesses are definitionally constrained due to limited TAM, but in many cases provide differentiated intelligence due to local market knowledge, insider access or simply because they speak the language of the market they are covering. Whether these represent compelling investment opportunities or acquisition targets is an open question, as investors and acquirers may be concerned by the products’ limited appeal. This is a question that the market will likely address in the coming years as private markets mature further and strategics beef up their offerings.
To state the obvious, the business of data has changed dramatically with the explosion of AI capabilities. Private markets data providers should aggressively look to fill gaps in information with any additional marginally beneficial data point on financial performance or meta-analysis of customer sentiment and market share. If AI enables it, customers will demand it.
To put a finer point on the above, I will make a few predictions:
This is a market for strategics and venture capital funds; we will see significantly more M&A and venture investment than sponsor activity in the next few years. There is limited opportunity for private equity funds to invest, unless they are willing to roll-up several providers, though they will remain interested and actively pursue these companies because of their attractive business models and their intimate understanding of the markets they serve.
AlphaSense or S&P will acquire CB Insights. Both companies are poised to serve private markets in a real way and far more likely to buy than build. CB Insights is the largest remaining independent business in the market and its company / transaction data and technology research complements both company’s offerings nicely.
Pitchbook will acquire a business in the funds / GP / LP data category. Pitchbook is already the market leader in the company and transaction data category; beefing up its fund and institutional investor data, which is not quite as strong as Preqin’s or With Intelligence’s, would further cement its position in the market. Fintrx or Dakota may be reasonable targets, especially because of the strength of their data on RIAs, a key target for fundraisers looking to raise capital from HNWI and retail investors.
We will see more data partnership deals and go-to-market collaboration between data providers. Executives will recognize that the industry is headed towards consolidation and that point solutions will be folded into larger platforms serving the entire M&A value chain. Entering data partnerships is an effective short- to medium-term strategy to ensure relevance beyond one narrow workflow and a long term strategic decision to better understand a company’s position in the market and scope out potential acquisition targets or acquirers.
Analysts and associates spending 10 hours on desktop research for one deal will be a thing of the past. AI research tools trained on reams of unstructured data, expert call transcripts, and market research reports will create massive efficiencies for junior M&A professionals historically tasked with labor intensive assignments that largely involve collecting and organizing information on companies, deals and prospective investors.
The next wave of new companies serving private markets will not be data providers, but rather data integration products and companies focused on relationship management. Entrepreneurs take note - investment professionals are in need of sophisticated tools that connect and analyze internal and external data and integrate third party data providers and CRM systems. With efficiencies created by these tools and other, dealmakers will focus more on cultivating their network and business relationships. Workflow tools that address these needs will be in high demand, as will platforms for engagement with industry stakeholders, whether software-based or real life.
Jared Bochner previously worked at Endicott Capital and Preqin. He currently works at OurCrowd.
Interesting Content
What Harvey is doing to win the legal AI race it inadvertently started - Business Insider
Litigation Market Map - LegalTech Fund
📧 If you would like to talk, please email us at a.boden@asymmetrixintelligence.com
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