February 2026: AI, Capital Shifts, & Alt Data Innovation

The theme for February 2026 has been focused on the interplay of AI, Capital Shifts, and Alternative Data innovation in a volatile financial market. Take a look at our data roundup below to get latest updates across the industry. 

Also, we just updated our Asia Data Map. It’s a great tool to assist with research planning. You can request a copy here.

Buy Side Performance & News

Steven Cohn topped the Hedge Fund tables with his $3.4B payday according to a report by Bloomberg.

Schonfeld is launching a second equities unit, Triwood Asset Management, to focus on Asia based securities for its long short strategies.

Saba Capital Management has offered to buy stakes in three funds run by Blue Owl Capital at steep discounts.

Verition Fund Management is licensing Photon, the prop trading technology developed by Eisler capital.

According to a report by Baron’s Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund by AUM, made a series of notable portfolio adjustments in the fourth quarter, increasing exposure to technology and healthcare stocks while exiting positions in telecoms and pharmaceuticals.

Deem Global, a London based fund, is closing the fund to new capital as assets approach the $3bn mark, according to a report by Bloomberg. 

Maverick Capital introduced four new equity positions in the fourth quarter of 2025 that immediately ranked among its top holdings, according to Institutional Investor.  It added large stakes in Alphabet, Applied Materials, Boston Scientific and Visa. The moves came after a strong 2025, with Maverick’s flagship strategies posting gains of between 29% and 40%, momentum that largely carried into January. 

Lucerne Capital Management is increasing its focus on US Farmland Investment strategy. 

According to a report by Bloomberg based on a note from GS Prime Group, Hedge funds drove the largest net buying of Asia equities in Feb 2026 since 2016, with demand fueled by optimism around AI infrastructure firms. 

Pershing Square Capital Management has built a substantial position in Meta Platforms, committing around $2bn to the social media and technology group.

According to a recent note from BCA research, the Yen carry trade has become a “ticking time bomb” for hedge funds and other leveraged investors, with a potential for sharp and disorderly unwind.

LSEG shares rose sharply in February after news broke of Elliot Investment Management's stake in the firm.

Extreme volatility in US and European markets are creating fresh trading opportunities with Hedge Funds ramping up options strategies that profit from divergence between individual stocks and broader equity indices. 

According to data from S3 Partners and other sources, hedge funds are stepping up short positions in software companies after generating approx $24B in profits from bearish bets so far in 2026.

Fund Launches, Closings, Redemptions & Asset Raising 

GIC has recently redeemed around $250M from Jain Global, less than two years after backing one of the hedge fund industry’s largest launches in recent years, according to a report by the Business Times.

Multi-strategy major Millennium Management has increased its capital backing for Engineers Gate, adding a further $300M to the platform earlier this year, taking its total commitment to the firm to approximately $3.6B.

Bramshill Investments is launching a new fund to focus on emerging manager strategies.

One River Asset Management is acquiring the quant investment unit of LGT Capital Partners that will increase its AUM to $3B.

Echion Capital is launching with a $1.5B backing from Millennium Capital.

Tekmerion Capital Management, a macro hedge fund,  is spinning out of Brevan Howard and set to launch later this year with over $1B in investor commitment.

Farrer Capital Management is raising up to $400M for a new agriculture strategy driven by renewed investor interest in commodities.

Global systematic manager Moreton Capital Partners is looking to raise an initial $1bn for its newly-launched global commodity futures strategy – the MCP Global Commodities Alpha Fund.

Quantitative hedge fund AlphaQuest is shutting its doors after suffering three consecutive years of losses, marking the end of a roughly 25-year run for the $2bn firm.

THE DATA CORNER

Product Launches & Enhancements

Factset announced the launch of its MCP server to enable market data for enterprise and agentic applications.

Options data and analytics specialist OptionMetrics has launched two new datasets IvyDB US7.0 and IvyDB ETF 5.0, enhancing its existing data offering for hedge funds, quantitative researchers, and other institutional investors. 

SyndiGate media Inc launched “CNBC Realtime breaking headlines” - a text news product utilizing a live stream from CNBC TV, suitable for black boxes, high-speed and algorithmic traders. The feed yields approximately 50+ daily market-moving and breaking headlines. 

Akanomics expanded its Nowcasting revenue tracking methodology to track 175+ firms in the US Industrials (88), Materials (41), and Consumer (47) sectors. Signals based on this data maintain a Sharpe of 1.5-2.5. See details in the published whitepaper.

RepVue enhanced its product to capture “AI Impact on Business” in its 15K+ surveys per month. This sentiment among sales reps is a timely and measurable signal for forward company performance. 

Speech Craft Analytics has released its most advanced Earnings Call Vocal Biometrics data set, calibrated specifically for executives on company earnings calls.

The model and its historical efficacy is outlined in a newly released white paper.

Global Financial AI Announces Launch of a Specialized AI Platform for Strategy Modeling and Multi-Asset Execution.

Datago announced the launch of their Retail Investor sentiment Analytics -Korea-V3 product with significant enhancements. 

CEFData announced the availability of its proprietary database that assigns an AI disruption risk score to every portfolio company held by exchange listed and private/non-traded BDCs, and then rolls those company scores into a position-weighted risk score for each BDC vehicle.

Insig AI announced availability of a machine readable Central Bank dataset with 10+ years of history, delivered as a tagged text and source PDFs which can easily be processed by AI engines and/or used by Systematic Macro funds.

Hatched Analytics launched a new EXPE (Expedia Group) data feed predicting booked room nights with a 0.99% 6Q error.

New Research & Insights

CMG published a recap of trends, key milestones and highlights that defined investment and trading in 2025.  

CMG DataLab published an Ebook that helps firms move beyond fragmented data by focusing on timeliness, completeness, and depth to gain a competitive edge in fast-moving equity capital markets. It demonstrates how structured datasets can transform raw deal information into actionable insights for every stage of the transaction lifecycle.

Orbit published new research analyzing how companies across sectors are deploying AI in production, based on Q4 2025 earnings call transcripts and conference disclosures. Read the full report to see the five structural trends identified by the analysis.

Daloopa announced the publication of its latest research report - Benchmarking AI Agents on Financial Retrieval. The report shows that AI agent accuracy in financial retrieval significantly increases when using structured data. Testing 500 real-world finance questions, Daloopa found accuracy gains of up to 71 percentage points when agents used an auditable financial database instead of the public web.

Contact us at info@battlefin.com if you would like to contribute to this newsletter or need more info on any of above.