*Gene Gallagher at Exabel and Tim Harrington at BattleFin speak at Discovery Day New York Fall 2025. Credit: BattleFin*

Reinforcing Our Role as The Trusted Alternative Data Events Leader

Last week’s BattleFin Discovery Day New York reaffirmed our vision: to serve as the trusted alternative data events leader, connecting innovative alternative data providers with buyers hungry for actionable signal. Held at the elegant NY Athletic Club, the event delivered substantive insights, high‑impact networking, and real momentum for the the evolving alternative data ecosystem.

Below is a recap of the key takeaways, standout themes, and what made the event truly special — as well as a teaser for what’s next.

Why Discovery Day Matters for Alternative Data

In the world of quantitative finance, investment management, and corporate research, alternative data has evolved from a niche curiosity into a mission‑critical resource. But adoption is still uneven. Many firms struggle with signal selection, compliance, integration, and scalability.

That’s where events like Discovery Day become essential: they aren’t just showcases, but accelerators. By bringing together alternative data providers and data buyers (asset managers, hedge funds, corporates, quant teams), we help close the gap between what’s possible and what’s practical.

This year’s edition centered on four major pillars:

Risk Transparency
Energy & Commodities Alpha
AI + Alt Data Infrastructure
Data Automation & Workflow Efficiency

Each pillar surfaced fresh perspectives and shared use cases, demonstrating how alternative data is no longer “nice to have” — it’s foundational for competitive edge.

Key Themes & Session Highlights

Risk Transparency

Speakers from SRP and Parameta Solutions challenged prevailing practices in risk monitoring. They argued that standardized daily sensitivity metrics and transparent OTC derivative data are reshaping how funds oversee their structured exposures. In volatile markets, legacy risk models often lag — but with real‑time or daily derivative and sensitivity data, clients can detect anomalies, stress test portfolios more effectively, and act proactively.

One overarching message: if you’re relying solely on quarterly disclosures or static risk reports, you’re leaving too much on the table. The more granular visibility afforded by modern alternative data feeds can help surface hidden exposures before they become surprises.

Energy Markets: Refiners Over Crude

With commodities and energy ever more central to macro risk, the session with Kpler cut through conventional wisdom. Instead of predicting alpha via raw crude prices, Kpler emphasized refiner margins — i.e. the spread between input cost and product output — as the more discriminating driver of returns.

Thanks to new alt data (satellite, shipping, trade flows, processing capacity), firms can now forecast refinery-level earnings, not just top-line commodity moves. That opens opportunity for differentiated energy trades, hedges, or structured overlays grounded in fundamental operational insight.

AI + Alt Data Infrastructure

A powerful combo emerges when artificial intelligence meets robust data infrastructure. Exabel and CliftonAI made a compelling case for evaluation, mapping, and compliance‑ready integration as mandatory steps in accelerating alternative data deployment.

Exabel’s platform helps transform raw alternative data into features and signals ready for modeling.
CliftonAI brings a compliance and governance overlay that ensures data usage aligns with regulatory constraints.

Together, they demonstrated how firms can move from pilot projects to large-scale, enterprise-grade deployments of alternative data and AI agents — confidently and with audit trails.

Data Automation & Alerting

Time-to-insight is shrinking constantly. Manual feeds, one-off scripts, or legacy APIs can’t keep pace. That’s why vendors like Sequentum, 2iQ, and FluxHub stole attention with demonstrations of precision data collection and AI-powered alerting.

Key advantages they highlighted:

Reduced latency and freshness (automated scraping, ingestion)
Noise suppression (filtering, deduplication, anomaly detection)
Self‑learning alert thresholds (adaptive triggers)

In practice, these data automation systems let analysts focus on signal interpretation — not plumbing — and create tighter feedback loops in production models.

What Elevated the Experience

The content was strong, but what truly brought it all together were the elements that made the day functional, actionable, and memorable:

Refined ambiance: The NY Athletic Club lent an elevated backdrop, balancing professionalism and warmth.
Curated 1:1 meetings: Rather than generic networking, providers and buyers met face-to-face with intention. The speed, relevance, and structure enabled faster vetting of potential partnerships.
Tightly scoped panels: We avoided fluff. Every panel had a clear problem and path to implementation — bridging theory and real use cases.
Signal over talk: Across conversations, the hunger was clear: participants sought concrete, testable signals — not just hype about big data.

In short: the event succeeded because it didn’t just bring people together; it gave them a shared agenda.

Standout Moments & Conversations

A buyer revealed that after a recent exposure shock, they pivoted toward daily derivative-level data feeds (versus end-of-quarter reporting) — and avoided surprises in their structured book.
An alternative data provider walked through onboarding delays: a buyer rejected a dataset due to mapping mismatches and compliance flags. The provider pivoted to adopt Exabel/CliftonAI frameworks to fast-track integrations.
In hallway chats, many buyers expressed frustration with overlapping product vendors. The curated 1:1 format allowed rapid elimination of noise and focused trials.

These real conversations echoed the themes of the panels and underscored the progress — and remaining gaps — in the alt data industry.

What’s Next: London 2025 & Beyond

If New York reinforced our reputation as the trusted alternative data events leader, then London 2025 is primed to further that momentum. Expect deeper regional insights, new data challengers, and even more focused implementations. (Seats fill fast — reserve your spot early.)

Meanwhile, some larger takeaways for the industry:

Alternative data is maturing — buyers now demand reliable ingestion, mapping, and compliance readiness.
Infrastructure matters — those who build automation, alerting, governance, and signal pipelines will gain scale.
Differentiation is in nuance — marginal edges, like derivative transparency or refiners vs. crude, will separate winners from followers.
Signals must be operational — providers must think beyond the dataset to how clients can integrate, alert, and action.

BattleFin Discovery Day New York 2025: Key Takeaways

Reinforcing Our Role as The Trusted Alternative Data Events Leader

Why Discovery Day Matters for Alternative Data