Founders: Jack Kokko (CEO), Raj Neervannan
Launched:Â 2011
Headquarters:Â New York City
Funding: $770 million
Valuation: $2.5 billion
Key technologies: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, deep neural networks/deep learning, explainable AI, generative AI, machine learning
Industry: Enterprise technology
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 0
Recently backed by Alphabet's CapitalG and Mary Meeker's Bond, AI-powered search engine AlphaSense is carving out a niche for detailed, real-time financial information analysis for analysts, investment research, competitive intelligence and corporate strategy. This past year, it passed the $200 million mark in annualized revenue and added $250 million in venture finance in two separate rounds.
AlphaSense competes indirectly with Dow Jones-owned Factiva for news and industry trends, S&P-owned financial database and company analysis platform Capital IQ, and CB Insights for data-driven insights in emerging technologies, startups and venture capital. This first-time Disruptor 50 company has an edge over these closely aligned rivals in launching advanced AI tools for peering into wide-ranging industries and gleaning insights.
Last year, AlphaSense upped the ante by releasing its first generative AI toolset, Smart Summaries, which works to speed up the research process and gives users more insights from equity research, earnings calls and expert interviews. AlphaSense also debuted Assistant, a gen AI chat tool, and Enterprise Intelligence, which layers in AI search technology summaries onto customers' proprietary internal research and premium external documents. These products extract insights from large language models developed by AlphaSense.
Strengthening protection of its intellectual property, the search platform was granted its 14th U.S. patent this past year. The new patent is for an innovation that alerts users to relevant financial news, results or data points at publication time.
Founded in 2011, the New York-based company is led by CEO and former Morgan Stanley financial analyst Jack Kokko, whose previous experience includes founding chair of doctor search engine BetterDoctor, acquired by Quest Analytics. Along with his co-founder, fellow Wharton MBA graduate Raj Neervannan, they have spent more than a decade building out the startup's AI capabilities and data stockpile to optimize its language models and algorithms.
Despite the hype around AI, AlphaSense successfully pulled in a $100 million addition to its Series D financing last April at a valuation of $1.8 billion, and topped that off with $150 million led by Meeker valued at $2.5 billion. Notably, Goldman Sachs has been a leading investor since 2021, and began delivering the firm's aftermarket research on the AlphaSense platform the next year.
In all, it tallies up more than 4,000 corporate customers including Petronas, HSBC and Samsung. Pricing is based on annual subscription rates of $10,000 to $20,000 for packages of external market perspectives to centralized, siloed research that adds internal research content. Users can search content in eight languages.
The AI financial research startup recently opened an Asia-Pacific hub in Singapore, and brought on board a chief marketing officer, Heather Zynczak, experienced in pre-IPO technology and high-growth companies.
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