Databento, a Salt Lake City-based provider of an API-first market data platform, has raised $97 million in Series B funding led by NEA. The company delivers real-time and historical financial data across 70+ exchanges with usage-based pricing, sub-millisecond latency, and nanosecond timestamps. The capital will fund expansion to 20+ data centers and 100+ petabytes of storage.
API-First Model Disrupts Terminal Pricing
The timing comes amid a shift from legacy terminals to programmatic access. Databento revenue grew 6.65x year-over-year with 97% enterprise retention and reached profitability ahead of schedule. The round drew more than $300 million in demand and was 3x oversubscribed. Databento's approach addresses the friction of months-long procurement cycles and opaque pricing that has long favored large institutions.
Legacy Vendors Create Access Barriers
Procuring institutional-grade market data from dominant providers has historically required lengthy sales processes and minimum commitments. One founder anecdote notes sending over 100 emails over 11 months to Bloomberg before receiving sample data on a thumb drive via mail. This model excludes emerging managers, fintech developers, and AI labs needing rapid iteration on large datasets.
Practitioner-Built Infrastructure Scales
Databento built its platform after running high-frequency trading desks at firms including Two Sigma and Flow Traders. The unified API delivers full L3 order book feeds, raw PCAPs, and normalized data across equities, futures, and options. Customers gain the same interface for backtesting and live trading without separate integrations. The system processes 200 billion market updates daily with 6.1 microsecond median normalization latency using Rust and C.
As CEO Christina Qi noted:
"Programmatic access to market data is becoming the industry default. We believe that three years from now, more finance professionals will know how to use a Databento API than a traditional terminal."
NEA Leads Oversubscribed Round
NEA led the round with participation from DRW, Redpoint Ventures, and Tribe Capital. Rick Yang, Partner and Head of Technology at NEA, joined the board. The oversubscription signals strong conviction in Databento's ability to capture share from legacy providers through self-service and pay-as-you-go economics. The firm had previously raised roughly $37.5 million across seed and Series A rounds.
$50B Market Data Industry Shifts
The financial market data sector reached $49.2 billion in 2025, with record spend exceeding $50 billion according to Burton-Taylor and WatersTechnology. Alternative data markets are projected at $29.6 billion in 2026. Growth is fueled by AI-driven strategies, regulatory changes such as SEC market data reform, and the shutdown of IEX Cloud, which displaced users seeking modern alternatives.
Competitors include Massive (formerly Polygon.io), which raised $14.7 million total, and several bootstrapped providers such as Algoseek and ORATS. Databento's exchange-colocated infrastructure and free redistribution rights differentiate it from these narrower or legacy-focused offerings.
Ex-Hedge Fund Founder Brings Domain Depth
CEO Christina Qi previously co-founded Domeyard LP, a hedge fund trading up to $7.1 billion daily. She worked at UBS and Goldman Sachs before building Databento. The team of fewer than 30 engineers now serves 3,000+ companies and 40,000+ users across 182 countries, with hedge fund clients managing more than $520 billion in AUM.
Global Expansion Targets 20 Data Centers
With deployments already covering CME, Eurex, and EEX data, Databento plans to integrate Binance spot, futures, and options feeds while opening 20+ data centers worldwide within six months. The company also added reference data products including corporate actions and security master in 2024.