London, 25 October 2022: BMLL, the leading independent provider of harmonized historical Level 3 data and analytics in the global equity and futures markets, today announced that it has secured a $26 million Series B investment in its latest funding round. The round was led by Nasdaq Ventures, FactSet and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund, with support from ACF Investors and other existing investors.
BMLL provides historical level 3 data and analytics to the most sophisticated participants in the global capital market. BMLL’s clients, including banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds and global exchanges, can access BMLL’s order data and analytics, enabling them to gain predictive insights, test strategies to build alpha and understand how orders behave the markets themselves.
Investments will help BMLL implement its sharp focus on customer needs for greater data coverage in an increasing number of global markets. The funding will support investment in the acquisition of new datasets worldwide; expanding BMLL’s engineering capabilities to integrate these new data and analytics capabilities into existing products for an ever-expanding universe of customers; and building on its existing presence in North America with the opening of an office in New York.
News of the funding comes during a period of rapid growth for the company. Over the past 12 months, BMLL has seen significant revenue growth; added Tier 1 clients, including investment banks, exchanges, buy-side firms, academics and regulators; expanded in Art futures market; and launched its flagship product BMLL Vantage for EU and US stocks and ETFs.
Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL said: “We are thrilled to have secured $26 million in our Series B funding round. The investment is a testament to the growing need for more sophisticated tools to understand how markets actually behave and drive performance. Our detailed Level 3 data and analytics capabilities help market participants unlock the full predictive potential of historical price data and make more informed decisions.”
Gary Offner, senior vice president and managing director of Nasdaq Ventures, said: “Nasdaq Ventures is committed to investing in financial technology companies that align with our vision of reimagining the markets of tomorrow. By democratizing access to the most detailed data and analytics, all market participants can benefit from BMLL’s solutions, and we are excited to support their continued growth.”
Jonathan Reeve, executive vice president, head of content and technology solutions at FactSet, said: “Data-driven solutions are the lifeblood of our industry and the driving force behind our product development and the collaborations we build. FactSet is pleased to support the growth and success of BMLL, which shares our commitment to empowering the financial community to make more informed investment decisions through access to high-quality data and analytics. We are pleased to invest in BMLL and its order book data and analytics platform, which provides market participants with a detailed understanding of market movements.”
Kerry Baldwin, Co-Founder, Managing Partner, IQ Capital: “IQ Capital led BMLL’s seed round and continued to support the company in its early stages. We supported and worked closely with BMLL’s exceptional leadership team to develop their breakthrough Deep Tech product, which democratizes access to Layer 3 data for the wider industry. Our latest investment from our growth fund, which supports the companies in our portfolio that are outperforming, will support the company’s continued growth and international expansion.”
BMLL CEO Paul Humphrey summed up: “Our mission has been to democratize access to Layer 3 data and analytics capabilities, and this latest funding will support our goal of making this information available to a wider audience. We are very proud of the outstanding industry recognition we have received over time, and I would like to thank my team for their unwavering commitment to customer service, our valued customers for their support and our investors for supporting our vision.”
Over the past 12 months alone, BMLL has been on an accelerated growth path, securing a number of significant clients and collaborations. BMLL believes Office of Financial Control (FCA) as a client using BMLL Data Lab and BMLL Data Feed to study order behavior. NYU Quant Team uses the BMLL Data Lab to conduct futures market research in the university’s Mathematics in Finance program. Kepler Cheuvreux‘s teams perform order book analytics to optimize algo performance using BMLL Level 3 data. Moreover, BMLL helps Exchange Aquis to give its members an understanding of the dynamics of the market structure, while SIXTH group uses BMLL data for customized order book analytics for Swiss EBBO. I Jeffries conduct detailed order book analysis for passive / aggressive trading strategies using BMLL data.
Jeffries acted as exclusive financial advisor and Taylor Wessing LLP acted as legal advisor to BMLL in connection with the transaction. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP acted as legal counsel to Nasdaq Ventures, and Mills & Reeve LLP acted as legal counsel to FactSet and IQ Capital.
ENDINGS
Media contacts for BMLL:
Sybil Muller, Principal, Streets Consulting
email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 (0)20 8187 8324
Notes for editors
About BMLL Technologies
BMLL Technologies is a leading independent provider of consistent historical data and level 3 analytics to the most sophisticated global capital market participants.
BMLL offers banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds and global exchange groups immediate and flexible access to the most detailed Level 3 data, T+1 order book and advanced analytics, allowing you to accelerate research, optimize trading strategies and build alpha with unprecedented speed and scale.
Founded in 2014 at the University of Cambridge Machine Learning Labs, the platform enables researchers and analysts from global financial firms to apply sophisticated statistical methods to BMLL’s unique big data sets with applications such as market impact, pre- and post-trade analytics, order book modeling and compliance . Users no longer need to buy, curate and harmonize data. With BMLL, they get cost-effective instant access to a cloud-based Data Science environment through a single web portal with a long history of the most detailed, complete order book data on global equities, futures and ETFs for backtesting and simulation delivered directly to their desktops processes.
For more information, please visit our site and follow us on Twitter @bmlltech and LinkedIn.
About Nasdaq Ventures
Nasdaq Ventures is the global venture capital investment program of Nasdaq, Inc. (Nasdaq: NDAQ), focused on developing talent and advancing technology in the financial services industry, driving innovation across key themes including data analytics, artificial intelligence, compliance and more.
About FactSet
FactSet (NYSE:FDS | NASDAQ:FDS) provides superior content, analytics and flexible technology to help its approximately 180,000 users see and seize opportunities sooner. We empower investment professionals to outperform with informed awareness, portfolio lifecycle workflow solutions and industry-leading support from dedicated professionals. We are proud to have received numerous awards for our analytics and data-driven solutions, including being recently added to the S&P 500 and repeatedly receiving 100 points on the Human Rights Campaign® Corporate Equality Index for our LGBTQ+. policies and practices. Subscribe to our Thought Leaders Blog for daily updates oninsight.factset.com. Learn more atwww.factset.comand follow us on Twitter:www.twitter.com/factset .
About IQ Capital
IQ Capitalis Europe’s leading deep-tech venture capital firm: with $1 billion AUM over 20+ years, we’ve invested in an unrivaled network of reputable founders solving some of the world’s biggest challenges – across sectors including ML and AI, Human-Machine Interfaces, advanced engineering/robotics and materials, medical technology and life sciences, financial technology and cyber security. IQ Capital’s 50+ portfolio companies are visionaries and dominate their respective markets globally. IQ Capital has the highest global returns across 5 of our funds. Our initial Seed and Series A investments range from £0.5m to £10m with the option of further investments of up to £30m through our growth fund strategy.
