Subtle cash managers have lengthy turned to intel from credit-card receipts or satellite tv for pc pictures of shops’ parking tons into an investing edge, however this knowledge is more and more changing into desk stakes.
Hedge funds and different cash managers spent $2.8 billion on various knowledge in 2025, in keeping with a brand new report from consultancy Neudata, a 17% leap from the 12 months earlier than. It is greater than double what asset managers spent on various knowledge in 2021, which incorporates a variety of non-traditional data sources.
The report tasks that the overall spend on various datasets might leap to greater than $23 billion within the consultancy’s bull case in 2030 and slightly below $8 billion within the bear case. The motive force for this progress — and the way a lot will come over the remainder of the last decade — shall be primarily based on what number of new entrants, each patrons and sellers, enter the market, Daryl Smith, head of analysis at Neudata, stated.
“Loads of funds have solely caught their toes in,” Smith stated, and “a number of hundred” new datasets have been launched final 12 months alone.
AI can also be altering how funds eat and ingest various knowledge sources, the report notes.
Now that structuring and cleansing uncooked knowledge has turn into a quicker, cheaper activity due to AI instruments, asset managers are on the lookout for direct hook-ups to various knowledge distributors’ feeds. It is also opened up alt knowledge to a variety of managers that have been as soon as unable to tug significant insights from the information due to technical challenges.
These new funds might be a giant driver of the trade’s progress within the coming years, from the demand aspect, Smith stated.
Extra firms might be promoting knowledge
Some new knowledge distributors won’t be start-ups that stumbled onto one thing intriguing, however as a substitute acquainted model names. Established firms which have seen web-scraping bots take their knowledge to promote are actually entering into the sport, Smith stated.
He stated Neudata’s consulting staff, which helps new patrons and sellers navigate the market, has gotten outreach from big-name firms just lately, although he stated he could not reveal the names of the potential sellers. Trustpilot, the buyer evaluate web site, is one instance of a agency that has begun promoting its knowledge and has offered at Neudata conferences previously, Smith stated.
Unsurprisingly, knowledge sources monitoring the expansion of synthetic intelligence have been in excessive demand final 12 months. The report factors out distributors similar to Aterio, which monitor knowledge middle development and energy utilization, for instance.
Nonetheless, the preferred kind of dataset, of which there are hundreds, is web-scraping choices, which accounted for 15% of the overall spend in 2025, roughly in keeping with 2024.
