OpenAI and Nvidia are both buying its data: 39-person Databento becomes a unicorn

Beating AI News Flash: Financial data company Databento has announced the completion of a $100 million Series C funding round, reaching a valuation of $1.1 billion. This comes just four months after closing a $97 million Series B round in July of this year.

The company currently has only 39 employees and has long been profitable. According to official disclosures, revenue has more than doubled since the previous funding round. The company had not originally planned to raise again; it was existing shareholders who proactively requested to add investment.

Databento is in the financial market data business. It obtains real-time trading and historical data for stocks, futures, and options directly from exchanges, then provides it via API to quantitative funds, brokerages, and developers. Customers can purchase on demand and let programs read the data directly, without going through the complex procurement processes of traditional financial data services.

AI companies have also begun to become important customers. Databento says that five of the world's six leading frontier AI labs have already signed enterprise contracts with it. OpenAI and Nvidia are both its customers. Founder Christina Qi has previously revealed that about 90% of the company's revenue comes from large financial institutions and AI labs.

The company plans to use the new funds to expand its global data infrastructure. Over the past four months, it has advanced the deployment of nine data centers in locations including Hong Kong, Japan, and London, preparing to provide historical trading data for more markets.