October Alt Data Roundup: Q3 Buyside winners, AI Talent Wars and More
Buyside Q3 numbers have been rolling in and good to see the industry booming. We see significant capital inflows, record AUM numbers at hedge funds and funds posting record returns. Look forward to seeing increased appetite for new sources of alpha a.k.a. data, new research themes, and solutions to make workflow efficient.
At BattleFin, we have been very active with rolling out new functionality and offerings on our Exabel platform this past month:
Check out a richer alt data catalog with KPI coverage and company metrics.
A new offering for Data Seekers! Built for buy-side teams and data strategists who want clarity, speed, and confidence in dataset discovery. See how each dataset performs through a trusted, standardized lens — before starting a trial.
We will be showcasing alt data powered research and insights at our upcoming conference in London on Nov 20. Please reach out to us at events@battlefin.com if you are interested in participating and haven't already signed up.
Buy Side News
Millenium Management is raising $5B for a new initiative focused on private market opportunities according to Bloomberg.
LMR Partners Converts and Cap Structure Arbitrage fund is up around 30% YTD.
According to fund services specialist Citco, hedge funds posted a 5.2% return in Q3, led by global macro strategies.
According to a HFR’s global hedge fund industry report, hedge funds posted record growth in Q3 with total capital rising for the 8th consecutive quarter to $4.98T.
According to a note from GS prime desk, quant driven hedge funds had a tough month as a sharp reversal in crowded trades impacted systematic strategies.
UBS is moving forward with the previously announced sale of its hedge fund unit, O’Connor, to US brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
Man Group reported record AUM of $214B for Q3 driven by strong inflows into long-only strategies and a recovery in quant funds.
Two Sigma Investments is closing down its Eclipse fund as part of an initiative to simplify its fund structure.
According to an Institutional Investor report, Valiant Capital Management has emerged as the top performer among the Tiger Cub hedge funds in 2025 with aggressive positions in power, semiconductor and digital infrastructure.
Quadrature Capital, an algorithmic trading specialist, reported a sharp rise in profitability with annual profits growing nine folds to £550M according to a report by The Times.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Citadel is acquiring FlexPower, a German power trading firm, in line with the firm’s global expansion in natural gas and power markets.
Jericho Capital has emerged as one of 2025’s standout hedge funds, driven by significant gains in technology stocks including AppLovin, Oracle, and Nvidia
High Ground Investment Management has posted a standout performance this year, with its flagship global equities fund up 26.7% year-to-date, according to a report by Financial News.
EDL Capital, the London-based global macro hedge fund, has posted a 29.9% return through September, according to a report by Reuters.
Bridgewater Associates Pura Alpha reported a 8.1% gain in Q3, taking returns for the first 9 months of the year to 26.2% according to a report by Reuters.
AQR Capital Management, the Connecticut based $165B hedge fund, reported strong gains across several of its strategies in Q3, including its Apex Strategy, which is now up 15.6% for first nine months of this year.
Jain Global has made its first significant move into physical natural gas trading through the acquisition of wholesale marketing firm Anahau Energy according to a report by Bloomberg.
Global hedge funds are returning to HK listings at the strongest pace since 2021 reflecting increased investor interest in Chinese equities.
New Fund Launches
Arini Capital Management, which was founded four years ago and manages $12bn, is adding PMs to their investment team.
Feynman Point Asset Management, a new $300m crypto-focused hedge fund spun out from New York investment firm Republic.
Lone Pine capital is launching a new concentrated long term equity fund according to a report in Financial Times.
MQT Asset Management, a macro investment manager, is getting ready to launch funds and SMAs in early November 2025.
THE DATA CORNER
Insights & News
Guideline's data shows NBA's revenue growing by 15% last season. Overall, the US Ad spending is projected to grow 4.6% to $113B in 2025.
Advan published quite a few reports recently that show the breadth and coverage of their data. We selected a few to share with you all t
A report analyzing Tesla’s (TSLA) recent earnings call, production trends and consumer demand in light of changes to the $7500 EV tax credit. The findings highlight Tesla’s continued strong vehicle desirability, robust U.S. sales, and rising interest in full self-driving technology, suggesting optimism for the company’s market performance heading into Q4 2025.
A report on the luxury consumer brands and lodging showing increased spending and 2026 outlook on the industry.
A report on Starbucks (SBUX) that shows progress in attracting customers and keeping them at the store for longer.
Stockpulse advanced social media monitoring services are now integrated into Deutsche Borse’s Scila surveillance system. Wondering if the risk and compliance groups at buyside firms are evaluating it too?
AKAnomics enhanced their revenue nowcasting by combining global macro and quant signals improving annualized returns and sharpe ratios.
New data from ForwardKeys shows a significant increase in people in China and India heading out to new destinations, driving revenue for travel and hospitality, during festive and holiday seasons. Folks investing in travel and hospitality will find the report very useful in fine tuning their models.
EquiLend published a comprehensive paper in Journal of Securities Operations & Custody Finance. It’s a great primer on short interest and lending data - data composition, lifecycle, investment uses cases for different asset classes. This is required reading for folks looking to optimize their investment strategies by incorporating short interest.
We came across an interesting chart from Zeki Data which sheds light on the talent wars at AI firms - specifically Anthropic, Mistral and OpenAI.You can sign up for detailed reports on this directly from Zeki data.
Product Launches
Exabel launched a new offering for Data Seekers! Built for buy-side teams and data strategists who want clarity, speed, and confidence in dataset discovery. See how each dataset performs through a trusted, standardized lens — before starting a trial.
TenderAlpha announced the launch of their Multi Tier Supply Chain Data. I took the product for a quick spin - exploring relationships in a bi-directional manner with a number that tries to quantify the relationship in an economic context was super useful. Many new use cases come to mind - even the event driven folks will find this useful.
Smart Insider announced an update to their global buyback dataset enabling a more precise tracking of insider buying programs and associated analytics. Check out their white paper which surfaces relationships in buyback activity and share price plus a “score” that makes it easier to use their data.
Sequentum, provider of enterprise grade web scraping solutions, announced a major upgrade of their cloud platform leading to improved workflows, engineering and operational efficiencies.
ZebraMatics launched their probability weighted corporate behavioural data that captures pre-disclosure signals derived from firms engagement with specific topics (M&A, litigation, restructuring, etc).
Babbl Labs launched YouTube Extended Dataset, the largest market-relevant social video data source in the finance industry to-date. This dataset transforms millions of hours of YouTube finance content into actionable market signals, complete with structured transcripts, engagement stats, entity mapping, and executive commentary across 25,000+ channels
Exabel announced the availability of AKAnomics on their platform.Its got extensive coverage and provides clarity on revenue estimates in the Industrials and Materials sector.
Looking to sharpen market and competitive analysis for your deals with credible external insights from news and analyst commentary, check out Lexis Nexis’s CIM Enhancement Guide.
Oxford Data Plan added coverage for Lufthansa, New York Times and Twilio on their platform.
If you wanted to query web data from your slack account, you should check out Kadoa’s AI agent for Slack.
PDL launches major enhancements to its Job Posting Dataset, introducing extracted Salary and Skills fields alongside daily data deliveries.
EquiLend announced the launch of an AI powered assistant to enable users to interact with securities financing and short interest content more efficiently, delivering fast, contextual responses to surface key insights and explore market trends with greater precision.
EVENTS
Mark Your Calendar
Nov 03-05, Next Gen AI and ML Conference in San Francisco, CA