Why Private Market Data Businesses Are In Demand For Investors – Corporate and Company Law

Private markets data providers have become highly sought after
targets, with numerous recent high-profile acquisitions making
headlines. The investment case is compelling: Preqin forecasts
global alternative assets to reach $32 trillion by 2030, an 8%+
CAGR from year-end 2024 levels. As the asset class scales,
participants are increasingly looking for more comprehensive
information, benchmarking metrics, and transparency. Yet there are
only a handful of scaled global providers with the breadth to meet
this demand.The combination of structural growth and a limited
number of independent providers helps explain the value of these
assets, with a few key selling points highlighted below:

1. Relationships and reach: The vast amounts of
   data collected from private market data providers run through the
   core of alternative asset managers and allocators. Successful data
   providers maintain continuous touch points with these market
   participants, supported by the unique expertise and knowledge
   required to connect pieces across the full fund lifecycle, from
   fundraising and deal origination to portfolio monitoring for
   thousands of LPs, investors and managers. Building and sustaining
   these relationships, while effectively structuring and distributing
   complex datasets at scale, requires a differentiated and
   difficult-to-replicate capability.




2. Recurring revenue streams: Most providers
   operate subscription-based models that offer data, insights,
   industry research, and workflow tools to clients across private
   equity, private credit, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure,
   and family offices. Contracts typically renew annually and expand
   as clients add new capabilities, teams, or geographies, driving
   increasing data needs as they scale. The predictability of
   contracted revenue, combined with opportunities for expansion and
   margin improvement, creates a resilient and attractive growth
   profile for buyers.




3. Switching costs and durable relationships:
   Clients rely on these platforms at multiple points in their
   decision-making processes: fundraising, identifying investment
   opportunities, allocating capital, and reporting to their own
   stakeholders. Over time, the data and associated workflows become
   integrated and deeply embedded within organisations across
   investment and development teams. Replacing a platform can be
   disruptive both internally and externally, leading to strong
   retention among clients. This creates a loyal, stable customer base
   and supports long-term revenue visibility and retention for private
   market data providers.

What buyers focus on in transactions

There are clear advantages to investing in these companies, but
what makes a “good” platform in a transaction, and where
do buyers tend to spend their time in diligence and negotiations? A
few themes come up repeatedly.

1. Data foundations and IP as value drivers:
   Buyers look closely at how the data is built, typically meaning a
   mix of directly sourced information from LPs and GPs,
   long‑standing proprietary databases and analytics layered on
   top. This emphasis on proprietary data has intensified as AI agents
   and plug-ins, and, more importantly, the platforms underneath these
   agents/plug-ins, become increasingly capable of packaging and
   presenting non-proprietary information, putting pressure on
   businesses whose core business is aggregation and presentation
   rather than ownership of the underlying data itself. The recent
   publication of open-source instruction files, by Anthropic,
   published on a code sharing platform is a live example of this.
   Well‑structured contributor agreements, data licences and
   governance processes give comfort that the business has the rights
   it needs to use, enhance and distribute its datasets and keep
   developing new products from them.




2. People and incentives: Much of the value sits
   in specialist teams: sector editors, analysts and data journalists
   who maintain relationships and ensure the information is current
   and insightful. Buyers want to understand how key employees are
   being retained and motivated. For private equity owners, senior
   management will often participate in a management incentive plan,
   while broader teams may be incentivised through bonus schemes,
   commission plans or other internal incentives tied to performance
   metrics. Strategic buyers typically rely more on long‑term
   incentive plans, share‑based awards and clear career paths
   within a larger group. Having the right incentive plans in place is
   critical to retaining the talent that can make the data
   valuable.




3. Integration and technology: Many private
   markets data businesses have grown by bringing together multiple
   specialist databases and services over time. Buyers look at how far
   that integration has progressed: are customers now buying from a
   single product suite, how consistent are contract terms across
   legacy businesses, and is the technology stack scalable and secure?
   Done well, integration can improve the client experience, while
   creating cross‑sell opportunities and, importantly, free up
   management time by centralising back‑office processes.

Regulatory considerations

1. Merger control and foreign investment: Private
   markets data deals are attracting increasing regulatory attention,
   particularly where the buyer is already a major player in asset
   management or index provision. When considering merger control
   risk, parties should consider questions such as how widely the
   target’s data is used across the market, whether competing
   managers and data providers could be disadvantaged if access or
   pricing changed, and how information should flow within a larger
   group that is both a user and a supplier of data. Because private
   markets datasets often touch infrastructure, energy, technology and
   other sensitive sectors, foreign investment and national security
   regimes can also come into play.




2. “Clean Teams”: In competitive or
   overlapping deals, parties typically put “clean team”
   arrangements in place so that the most sensitive commercial
   information such as detailed pricing, pipeline and product plans is
   only seen by a small group separated from day‑to‑day
   sales and strategy. This allows proper diligence and integration
   planning while managing antitrust risk and preserving competition
   if the transaction does not proceed.




3. Data, privacy and AI rules: Alongside
   transaction‑specific clearances, the broader regulatory
   framework for data and AI is evolving quickly. EU and UK data
   protection rules, together with new legislation such as the EU
   Artificial Intelligence Act, influence how these businesses
   collect, enrich and use data, and how they incorporate AI into
   their products. Investors are increasingly asking not only whether
   a platform is compliant today, but whether it has the governance,
   documentation and engineering discipline to adapt as those rules
   tighten, including around transparency, training data and
   auditability of models.

What’s next?

We expect continued consolidation and strategic partnerships
across data vendors, index providers, and asset managers as
participants seek to deliver broader and more integrated solutions
spanning public and private markets. At the same time, advances in
AI are likely to accelerate a separation between “data
owners” and “data packagers” as AI can increasingly
bypass intermediaries by compiling, summarising, and presenting
information directly within the tools people already use. For
private markets data businesses, this shift makes proprietary
datasets even more central to valuation and strategy.

As private markets continue to mature, high-quality data
platforms are also likely to play an increasingly important role in
portfolio construction, risk management, and performance
assessment, reinforcing their strategic importance within the
alternatives ecosystem.

Having advised on multiple data and analytics transactions,
including advising ICG on its acquisition of With Intelligence in
2020, and advising With Intelligence on its subsequent sale to
Motive Capital in 2023 and most recent disposal to S&P Global
in 2025, we are well placed to support both investors and
corporates pursuing similar opportunities in private markets
data.

Why Private Market Data Businesses Are In Demand
For Investors

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.