Databento raises $100m at $1.1bn to sell market data to AI labs

Databento raises $100m at $1.1bn to sell market data to AI labs

12 November 2026: Databento, which sells historical and live financial market data through an API, says it has raised $100 million in a Series C at a valuation of $1.1 billion, led by Fifth Down Capital, one of its earliest investors. Christina Qi, its chief executive, said: "We're also incredibly proud to have reached this valuation with just under 40 employees."

Not yet independently verified. The round, valuation and growth figures are Databento's own, from its post of 12 November; we found no post from Fifth Down Capital, and the company does not say how the money will be used. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Who put money in

Fitch Ventures joins as a strategic investor. Existing backers that followed on are NEA, DRW Venture Capital, Tribe Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Hedosophia, Trousdale Ventures, Cross Creek, Operator Collective, AVG and TGVP. The Series B closed earlier in 2026, so this is its second round of the year.

AI labs as market data buyers

Databento names its customers as quantitative trading firms, brokerages, asset managers, commodities firms, digital asset companies and AI labs, and the AI labs are the group the announcement dwells on. Databento says it has signed enterprise contracts with five of the six largest frontier AI labs, and Qi describes it as having "quickly established ourselves as a leading market data provider for AI and agentic workflows". The pitch to both groups is the same: order book and tick-level data, timestamped consistently across the many formats exchanges publish, so that a model or a trading system sees one clean record rather than a dozen feeds stitched together.

Databento says revenue has more than doubled since the Series B. It gives no revenue figure.

Data centres and an archive

In the past four months the company says it has nearly finished building infrastructure at nine data centres, which it lists as sites at ASX, HKEX, JPX, Aruba IT3, Equinix LD4, NY3 and ZH4, the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Vasby. Its stated ambition is to build the largest commercially available archive of historical market data.

What a buyer should establish

A data team weighing Databento against an exchange's own feed or a large terminal vendor should ask which venues the historical archive covers and from what date, whether redistribution inside a model or product is licensed, and how the per-venue exchange fees are passed on, since market data licences often cost more than the delivery. The announcement covers none of these.

Company profile on TrustList: Databento

Sources

• Databento: Series C announcement, 12 November 2026
• Ventureburn: Databento raises $100 million Series C, 12 November 2026