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Every corner of the alternative data world is buzzing following the month of August. A huge surge of activity included new data product launches, new funds, IPO news and more. Take a look at everything you need to know below. |
WHAT STANDS OUT |
News You Can Use |
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Big news of the month, Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, has officially exited the hedge fund he launched nearly five decades ago. Shout out to Fundamental PM and Analysts - Looking to gain more conviction in the companies you follow? Exabel has launched a new Hierarchical Modeling feature that let’s you leverage alternative data to go beyond Revenue KPI’s down the income statement. You don’t need an army of engineers or data scientists but can tap into Exabel’s team. Find out more in their white paper - this approach is illustrated using DoorDash’s business. Also, don't miss our new 2026 line up of Discovery Day alternative data events available now (details below)! |
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THE DATA CORNER |
What's Happening |
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State Street published a white paper that shows the predictive power of combining traditional short interest data with a sentiment score constructed from Reddit data. Definitely worth investigating. Checkout CredoIQ if you are curious about TikTok and its impact on financial markets. JPX is launching a limited trial of historical order book, index data and filings data on Snowflake. Hoeg and Co published a performance report on US Bank Industry covering 4411 banks operating in the US. Intelligentsia AI published a report on navigating the upcoming patent expiration of blockbuster oncology drugs. We came across a new use case of options data from folks at Spiderrock to figure out upcoming mergers and takeovers. Hope the event driven strat folks are reading this. Sensor Tower published their PC/Console Gaming Index that sheds light on who’s winning the platform wars for games, what types of games are trending and who are the top game publishers including revenue projections. Pass_by shared metrics that shows the predictive power of their data - correctly flagging 50 beats and 19 missed with tight Mean Percentage error (MPE), demonstrating strong directional accuracy and alpha generating potential. Check out Placer’s report on redrawing of the retail landscape and who’s winning. Data burning released a report on Uber’s business in India showing increasing traction in the market. SAS shared a nice research paper on building a machine learning framework to forecast corporate credit rating transitions (upgrades, downgrades, defaults). It blends bond-market, equity-market, and fundamental risk signals. Results show strong predictive power—particularly for downgrades—suggesting systematic investors can extract tradable information from credit-implied risks. The model identifies firms with a high likelihood of upgrade or downgrade, aiding proactive portfolio management. The model achieves AUCs as high as 90% out-of-sample, outperforming existing benchmarks. CIO review names Sequentum the top Enterprise Grade Web Data Platform. Endex announced a $14M raise led by OpenAI to build the first AI agent in Excel to accelerate financial modeling and data analysis. Curious about the hockey stick increase in spend on Padel by UK consumers? ExactOne published a snippet on LinkedIn. We also just found out there’s a game called Padel. :) |
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Data Product Launches |
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We have a lot of product launch news to share with you this month. Looks like folks didn’t take the summer off. Tipranks launched a new data set - Company KPIs- which tracks over 150K data points on 800+ US firms. Revelio Labs launches Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) a set of monthly labor market indicators that are designed to provide timely, granular, and nationally representative insights into the US labor market to complement the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Summary and JOLTS data releases. Nasdaq launched a new medical claims product that covers over $700B in spend on a patient level on an annual basis. Rushmore Labs, a Koch company, launched its building products supply chain dataset covering $200B spend across lumber, plywood, OSB and gypsum products. Rushmore has done extensive backtesting with individual company KPIs and significantly improving consensus forecasts for companies in and adjacent to the building products industry. SimilarWeb launched a point in time dataset, called Caliberated, for quants with extensive global coverage. Kadoa launched a natural language interface for defining web scraping tasks. The coordination AI agents breaks down the tasks and enlists sub-agents to complete it. Big Data Federation launched AI powered estimates for thousands of firms on Bloomberg. Check them out on Bloomberg at NH TWT_FINANCIALAI. Zeki Data launched Company Diagnostics designed as a draw-down service model for VCs, PEs, Fundamental Investment Strategies, Due Diligence functions, and M&A. It exposes structural risks and talent dynamics inside deep tech companies, uncovering execution challenges that never make it pitch deck, company updates or press releases. Zenlytic launched the Clarity Engine, a first-of-its-kind semantic modeling and governance layer that ensures AI analytics are 100% accurate, explainable, and trusted by business users. Six announced a new offering, Six iD Compliance, trusted, standardized sanctions and regulatory data across global markets — all in one customizable, easy-to-integrate platform. EDI has the just the right product for folks looking for one economic calendar that covers all the countries in the world. QUICK Corp published exclusion/inclusion criteria for TOPIX Oct 2026 constitution driven by TSE’s market restructuring. If you trade Japanese securities, you should check this out. IMX Data offers a dataset spanning a decade containing billions of Medical (Mx), Hospital (Hx), and Pharmaceutical (Rx) claim events covering institutional, professional, outpatient and inpatient claims.IMX’s ticker mapping includes approximately 1500 market symbols, and 4500 affiliate manufacturers representing approximately $6T in claim charges between 2020 and 2025 (Q2). Here’s a one pager that covers multiple investing use cases based on this data. Datago launched China Investor Relations Activities Analytics (CIRA-V2) that covers China’s A-Share Market’s IR activities. It covers over 5,000 listed companies. |
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Buy Side News |
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Numerai doubled its AUM to $1B after securing $500M from JP Morgan Asset Management according to a report by Bloomberg. According to Hedge Fund Research, hedge funds are enjoying their strongest fundraising year in more than a decade. According to a report by Reuters citing a note from Morgan Stanley prime brokerage, hedge funds are increasing their exposure to Chinese equities. Hedge Funds are paring back their bullish bets on crude to the weakest level in 17 years amid mounting concerns that supply will soon outstrip demand according to a report by Bloomberg. A growing number of institutional investors, including Texas Teachers and Erlen Capital, are pushing back against the rising cost of investing in multi-strategy hedge funds. Australian fund managers are increasingly taking on hedge funds betting against lithium stocks, positioning for a rebound in prices that could force short sellers to cover and intensify the sector rally. According to a recent client note from GS, hedge funds loaded up on US equities at the fastest pace in 2 months positioning portfolios for an expected rate cut in Sept by the Fed. Coinshares reported an inflow of $3.75B in digital asset investment products driving AUM to $244B. Financial News reported that Rob Citrones Discovery Global Opportunities fund posted a 4.2% return in July, lifting year to date returns to 17.5%. Brevan Howard ramped up its exposure to bitcoin, almost doubling its holding of IBIT, according to 13F filings. Renaissance Technologies saw its difficult summer continue in July, as the quant pioneer posted further losses across key strategies according to a report by Business Insider. Millennium Management has made its first-ever allocation to a South Korean hedge fund manager - Billionfold Asset Management in a SMA focused on Korean equities. According to a Bloomberg report, Honeycomb Asset Management is winding down most of its public equities portfolio and returning capital to investors, as the firm's founder David Fiszel takes a cautious stance on today’s frothy market environment. According to Bloomberg, Man Capital is maintaining a bearish view on emerging market hard currency debt, warning that this year’s rally is built on shaky foundations as US inflation limits the Fed’s capacity to cut rates. Hedge funds, including Marshall Wace and Millennium, are stepping up bearish wagers against Europe’s automotive sector. Hedge funds singled out WHSmith as a top short in July, weeks before the UK-listed travel retailer’s shares plunged more than 45% after disclosing a major accounting error at its North American unit, according to data from Hazeltree. Rokos Capital Management looks to cap its AUM at $20B. Point72 launched a VC fund open to external investors with a focus on the defense tech sector. |
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New Fund Launches |
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Valbonne Capital, a new Miami-based quantitative hedge fund firm led by Managing Partner Aidan Ranzieri, is preparing to launch publicly in September, following months of internal trading and investment strategy development. Nexus Commodities Capital Management, founded by Qin Xiao, has raised around $1B from Millennium Management to seed the new hedge fund. Taproot Management has received a commitment of $250M - a vote of confidence in iits novel model that replaces traditional PMs with senior analysts. Kedalion Capital Management is preparing to do a $1B capital raise after securing backing from Millennium Managment. Extant Capital, a credit hedge fund, is launching with $200M in seed capital from New Holland. |
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IPO Corner |
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IPO’s are back in vogue going by the performance of Circle, CoreWeave, Figma, Chime, Bullish and Firefly Aerospace. Our friends at IPO Prophet shared the IPO calendar for Q4 featuring some of the most diverse and exciting names in years: Gemini (GEMI) – Crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, eyeing a Nasdaq debut. Netskope (NTSK) – Cloud security and SASE leader, with ARR topping $700 million and growth above 30%. Klarna – The Swedish fintech giant targeting a $14 billion U.S. IPO, long awaited by the market. Black Rock Coffee Bar – Consumer retail growth story, reportedly aiming for a $1 billion+ valuation. Pattern Group (PTRN) – E-commerce accelerator with 35% revenue growth, filing for Nasdaq listing. WaterBridge Infrastructure – PE-backed water management and utility play, catering to demand for infrastructure exposure. Cerebras & Medline – Anticipated late-year entrants, representing AI chips and healthcare—two of the market’s most resilient themes. The diversity of this slate—spanning crypto, cybersecurity, fintech, consumer retail, e-commerce, infrastructure, AI, and healthcare—underscores just how broad the Q4 window has become. |
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EVENTS |
Mark Your Calendar |
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