Weekly DaaS Roundup for December 19

DaaS Never Sleeps

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World of DaaS
December 19, 2024

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NEWS, READS AND MORE

Most financial data providers fall into one of three categories: Production, Distribution and Activation. An incredibly detailed look at what that looks like and why Distribution is arguably the hardest. “Own the means of production or activation to extract most value, own the means of distribution and be compressed from both sides.”

While AI and compute gets the lion’s share of news coverage and funding dollars, it’s important to remember that without unique data, there is no differentiation. “Focus on your data strategy now—because tomorrow’s market leaders will be today’s data-harboring startups.”

A counterintuitive look at why companies like Basecamp and Notion no longer obsess with “measuring everything”. Companies from Carta to Facebook failed to see fundamental shifts in their business precisely because they were not measuring for them. The irony of a data centric newsletter suggesting to doubt the data isn’s lost on us.

Gresham surveyed 200 senior data decision-makers, and while it’s exciting to see that FIs are willing to spend more on data the report finds that only 21% of firms track data consumption, allocation, and costs in real time, with 42% doing so on a monthly basis - meaning the increased budgets may be to get a handle on spend and not to buy new data.

Without looking into, one would assume that modern supply chains are well oiled machines with every shipment down to the SKU tracked and accounted for. Turns out, it's a bit messier than that. We sat down with Catena Clearing’s CEO Jeremy Baksht to learn how they’re solving the problem.

The UK competition watchdog may block the transaction, although the news did little to deflate the record high prices of $BLK which have been above $1,000 a share since early November.

Tasks that were once achievable for a dollar now cost close to $100 with plenty of countermeasures to block, confuse, or deter scrapers - the era of a kid in a garage scraping the entire web is long gone.

🎧THE LATEST WOD PODCAST 🎧

Parenting paranoia vs safety, why data driven startups fail, “free range kids”, CEO sabbaticals, ketamine and 2000 lb pumpkins.

M&A AND FUNDING

Databricks raises $10B as it barrels toward an IPO

Databricks, the data analytics platform, has raised $10 billion in a series J that values the company at $62 billion.

Zest AI Announces $200M Million Growth Investment from Insight Partners

The AI lending technology company announced a $200 million growth investment to bolster underwriting, solutions, fraud protection, marketing, and data intelligence capabilities.

Keepit raises an additional $50M

Keepit, the data protection company keeps raising money, closing on $50M in its latest funding round in a series C in addition to a substantial debt round in 2023.

Bureau raises $30M Series B

The identity and risk intelligence platform aims to prevent fraud globally focusing on the sources of fraud.

BattleFin Acquires Exabel, Raises $4M

The alt data market maker will integrate with Exabel to provide a full discovery to deployment data experience.

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RANDOM ART(TIFICIAL HALLUCINATION) OF THE WEEK

prompt: the winter solstice in the style of Banksy

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