Big data Analytics company, Powerlytics, is the latest firm to receive funding from the CME Group's strategic investment arm Liquidity Ventures I LLC, which is aiming to provide capital to new fintech companies. The terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies.
Powerlytics is collecting and analyzing big data widely available from public sources and reconstructs the findings into financial statements. The firm claims to be able to provide a wide ranging view of the 144 million U.S. households and 27 million using data from the publicly available U.S. government sources.
The company will use CME Group’s investment to accelerate product development, strategic alliances, client services and sales and marketing. As part of the agreement, Managing Director of CME Group’s strategic investment group Mark Fields, will become an observer to the Powerlytics board of directors.
Mr. Fields explained, “The CME Group recognizes the significant opportunity for big data to revolutionize the financial services industry. In surveying the market, it became clear to us that Powerlytics has a strong value proposition and we are excited to support their growth.”
Powerlytics’ Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer, Jose Plenh-Dujowich stated, “Like any growing business, we need capital to fund our investments in product development, marketing and customer support. As a private entity, it’s important we, along with our existing financial partners, choose carefully on how we fund our growth.”
Instead of looking for more venture capital (VC) sources, the company chose to turn to a strategic investor which will not only fund the company, but also provide relationships, knowledge and additional expertise into the business.
“As you can imagine, a firm like CME Group is heavily quantitatively oriented, with many of their products based on mathematical equations, algorithms and probabilities. They understand the science of numbers. Consequently, when they were introduced to the Powerlytics market intelligence platform, they understood our value proposition,” stated Mr. Plehn-Dujowich.
“CME Group’s investment represents further validation of our market intelligence platform by one of the largest and most prestigious financial services companies in the world,” said Kevin Sheetz, CEO and co-founder of Powerlytics.
“We are extremely pleased that CME has shown confidence in Powerlytics by providing us with capital to expand the development and distribution of our existing market intelligence platform. CME Group is a valuable strategic investor that strengthens our team, and we look forward to the benefit of their insights and relationships,” he added.
