Canoe Intelligence sits at the center of developments in the way alternative investments data is collected, processed and reported for wealth managers and other players in what is a growing field.

Bloomberg, the business and financial information group, said yesterday that it has agreed to acquire Canoe Intelligence, an AI-powered data management and intelligence platform for automating private markets data. 

The transaction for an undisclosed amount puts two major themes on wealth managers’ agendas – AI and private markets.

“This is the most significant acquisition in Bloomberg's history since Barclays Risk Analytics and Index Solutions – a clear signal of where private markets data infrastructure is headed,” a spokesperson for Bloomberg said in an emailed statement. 

Bloomberg gives its users data on more than three million private companies, 50,000 private funds and 16,000 private direct loans, alongside analytics, news, research, and enterprise solutions.

The two firms had partnered earlier this year to bring some of Canoe’s data onto Bloomberg’s platform. Bloomberg did not disclose the price publicly, but an unnamed source close to the deal told Citywire, that news organization said, that Canoe was valued at 20 times current revenue, giving the deal a value of between $750 million and $1 billion. Bloomberg's own report on the deal did not say what was paid.

(Editor's comment: A multiple of about 20× revenue multiple is unsual in the fintech software-as-a-service sector, an tends to only happen if an acquirer sees strategic, not just financial value; the target has unique proprietary data; the deal unlocks new product lines and the buyer is consolidating a market where scale of data allows the purchaser to dominate a sector. Bloomberg wants to put the final pieces of a jigsaw in place in how it covers and issues data on private markets.) 

"We believe the combination of Canoe Intelligence and Bloomberg will bring new insights across the full investment lifecycle for both private and public markets," Wayne Barlow, Bloomberg's head of terminal product, told this news service when interviewed about the move. "With Canoe's capabilities, we will give investors a total portfolio view with accurate and timely private fund information, including fund valuations. 

"Over time bringing these capabilities together with Bloomberg's 50,000 private funds and ASKB, Bloomberg's agentic AI, to help investors analyze their permissioned data to accelerate discovery, streamline analysis, and generate insights with greater speed and confidence for both pre- and post-investment workflows. Ultimately, we are focused on equipping investors with the information they need to make more informed decisions," Barlow said

The center of gravity has swung in favor of private markets since the late 1990s, partly as a result of tighter reporting disclosure rules on listed firms, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley rules that came into force during the early Noughties after the Enron scandal, and a decade-plus of ultra-low rates post-2008 that attracted money into non-public firms. 

Non-listed company data, which has tended to be harder for investors to obtain in a timely fashion, has often been paper-based and digitalized relatively slowly. Canoe has been one of a cluster of businesses seeking to bridge the information gap. 

Putting private market data alongside other asset classes will help give users a single point of reference, helping with asset allocation, risk management and other objectives. 

James Hook, Bloomberg's head of data, said: "We believe it will make it easier for investors to make more informed decisions across their full portfolio – giving them access to higher quality, more granular, and timely data and insights on private markets."

Streamline
Canoe streamlines post-investment reporting and processes more than 1.5 million documents per month across more than 44,000 funds. It gives structured portfolio-ready insights to more than 500 institutional clients representing more than $11 trillion in assets under service. 

"Alternative investors manage billions in private capital without the visibility and insights that public markets take for granted. We've built Canoe around a fundamental belief: that shouldn't be the case,” Jason Eiswerth, CEO of Canoe Intelligence, said. “When we partnered with Bloomberg earlier this year on our PORT integration, we saw firsthand what becomes possible when Canoe's data automation meets Bloomberg's portfolio infrastructure.”

Canoe was incubated by principals of 10East and 22C Capital; its institutional investors included Blackstone Innovations Investments, Carlyle AlpInvest, Eight Roads, F-Prime, Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Hamilton Lane, and Nasdaq Ventures.

Jefferies LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to Canoe and Cooley LLP served as legal advisor to Canoe. 

In September last year, Canoe Intelligence launched Canoe Labs, an incubator where investment and operations professionals can bring new AI capabilities to life.

There has been a battle to win market share capabilities in the private markets/alternative investments area. For example, BlackRock acquired Preqin, a private markets data provider, for £2.55 billion (approximately $3.2 billion) in cash, completing the transaction in early 2025. In October last year, S&P Global bought private market data provider With Intelligence for $1.8 billion. In April, MSCI acquired private markets data and analytics firm PM Insights.

As reported in mid-August 2925, Dennis Mangalindan, a former senior figure at SEI Archway for more than 14 years, became senior director of sales at Canoe Intelligence; he leads the institutional and family office teams. In March this year, New York-headquartered Canoe launched Canoe Pro Tech: Asset Data PrimePlus in partnership with Prime Buchholz, an investment advisory and outsourced chief investment officer firm.