DaaS unicorns take 1.5 years longer to get to the $1bn mark, but require less total capital to get there.

We shared with our reader’s Tracxn’s State of DaaS report last week. While we’d argue that their universe is incomplete and that some of the companies mentioned aren’t true DaaS- it still is a pretty great overview of the industry and is illuminating when it comes to funding trends, rounds, investors and overarching themes.

Company Financial Data Still Dominates Funding

1. Company Financials Data ($806 million)

2. Industries ($327 million)

3. Geographical Data Platforms ($153 million)

4. Environment Data Platform ($95.7 million)

5. Horizontal ($49.5 million)

Tons of big players remain privately owned

So far this year, Underwriters Laboratories has been the only DaaS company to go public. With over 6,000 DaaS companies worldwide and $25.4 billion in capital raised, only 81 are publicly traded. As we pointed out in a previous piece, it’s clear why many data corporations don’t feel the need to go public. IPOs are not cheap, and keeping proprietary data away from the complications of regulatory filings allows companies to maintain an upper hand over competitors. 

More importantly, private investors are better suited for the flexibility that DaaS companies need to protect intellectual property and scale properly.

AlphaSense - leave some for the rest of us!

AlphaSense, which became a unicorn in June 2022, is valued at $4 billion. Looking at the top five DaaS funding rounds within the last two years - one name appears 3 times!

1. AlphaSense ($650 million, Series F)

2. Miovision ($195 million, Series D)

3. AlphaSense ($150 million, Series E)

4. AlphaSense ($100 million, Series D)

5. Apollo ($100 million, Series D)

When asked by AlleyWatch about the biggest challenges of funding, CEO Jack Kokko said that it’s deciding “the right amount of capital to raise. We determined that a strategic reserve would actually be very valuable to have on hand when there is an ongoing shift in the markets, as that can create invaluable opportunities down the road – opportunities that are easier to capitalize on when you have more funding than you expect to need for your core business.”

Kokko said the priority for AlphaSense in the next half year “will be on investing and scaling. That means expanding our content sets to provide stronger coverage across geographies and industries, as well as public and private companies—all with the aim to truly serve knowledge professionals across all types of businesses.”

Traxcn’s top DaaS companies 

Based on Traxcn’s proprietary score these are the top five DaaS companies in the world:

• Foursquare

• IHS Markit

• Zoominfo

• Morningstar

• TransUnion

The ranking is based on four scores: size, execution, growth, and team. It considers various aspects such as financing, investors, and overall growth. 

While the overall landscape is decidedly privately owned, of the top 5 companies, 3 are public.

DaaS still lives in the US

The United States has also received the most funding of any country, at just over $16 billion. Although India ranks within the top three in terms of total companies founded, it ranks 8th in funding. 

Funding CAGR is down 2% over the last five years, although late-stage funding is booming. What does this mean for DaaS? 

Despite funding growth rates declining overall, late-stage financing has surpassed $8 billion over the last 10 years in a sector typically defined by seed and early-stage backing. DaaS has reached a point beyond experimentation, and there’s no doubt that the faith in data is there. It’s simply being illustrated in a way that details an evolving industry. 

Two of the top DaaS companies, IHS Markit and Morningstar have come out as some of the most active acquirers in the sector, and late-stage funding is a great tool to initiate acquisitions. So far in 2024, there have been 27 acquisitions, with some notable ones being: 

• Preqin, a private equity database, was acquired by BlackRock in June

• StatsBomb, a sports data platform, was acquired by Hudl in August

• 42matters, a mobile app intelligence solutions platform, was acquired by SimilarWeb in July