Exabel raises $9 million in seed round for data insights

By Sunniva Kolostyak

AI analytics platform for investment teams, Exabel, has closed its fourth seed investment round, raising $9 million as it launches its alternative data insights product.

The investment comes from investor AWC (formerly Awilhelmsen Capital Holdings) and brings the total capital raised to over $21 million. AWC will make a direct investment of $6 million and provide a further $3 million in a flexible debt facility at the company’s option.

The investment will support the Oslo-based company’s plans for significant headcount growth in London and New York.

Neil Chapman, the CEO of Exabel, commented that 2020 was a great year for the start-up: over the year, it grew its customer base fivefold, built and launched its first commercial partnerships and proved the value of its platform to investment teams and Alternative Data vendors alike.

“We are excited to welcome AWC on board as we launch the Exabel Insights Platform, revolutionising the way Alternative Data vendors bring valuable insight from their datasets to the market,” Chapman said.

Arve Ree, CEO of AWC, added: “We’re delighted to support Exabel’s next phase of growth and we believe strongly in their potential to lead the emerging Alternative Data Insights category.”

Exabel also announced the launch of its newest product, the Exabel Insights Platform, created for alternative data vendors – and the AWC investment will support the marketing, at scale, of the platform to the growing addressable market of over 1000 alternative data vendors globally.

The Exabel Insights Platform supports a value-added insights creation, presentation and monitoring layer and is powered by Exabel’s Al analytics, financial modelling and data science toolset. Data vendors use the platform to first discover valuable insights in their datasets, then demonstrate that value to prospective customers in easy-to-create report cards and finally deliver a new Insights product that is attractive to a broad audience of financial buyers.

Vendors benefit by curating and distributing easy to consume investable insights in addition to their raw data offerings. Investment teams benefit by getting straight to the insights without the expensive and time-consuming process of extracting them from raw data inhouse.