TickSmith Corp., a provider of big data applications for capital markets, has raised $2 million from Illuminate Financial Management LLP.
Illuminate Financial Management LLP was founded in 2014 as a London based venture capital firm with an international reach, exclusively focused on capital markets financial technology.
TickSmith intends to use new funds to further commercialise its flagship product, TickVault.
TickSmith addresses a growing need of exchanges, banks and buy-side institutions in capital markets: exploring and unlocking value from constantly growing volumes and ever-increasing sources of financially relevant data. TickSmith powers the data distribution platform of CME Group, enabling the exchange to monetise its historical data.
Described as a financial data lake platform for capital markets, TickVault provides the missing link to centralise data from external and internal data feeds and enables API access to feed current and future data-intensive applications including data distribution, MiFID II compliance and reporting, backtesting of trading algorithms, market surveillance, risk management, and machine learning analytics.
TickSmith was founded by four industry veterans with decades of experience in developing and managing financial services data and technology solutions. The team has extensive experience in designing infrastructure for banks and have worked at companies like Morgan Stanley, Desjardins, IBM and FIS, formerly SunGard.
Mark Beeston, Managing Partner at Illuminate Financial Management LLP commented: “Data is taking the centre stage in capital markets. Consolidating high quality data and making it easily accessible is crucial throughout the whole trade lifecycle. TickSmith is at the forefront of this trend and is a vital piece of a next-generation, highly scalable and modular financial infrastructure, built on big data technology. With an experienced leadership team, a fully developed product offering and increasingly global client base – the firm strongly aligns with our investment strategy. We will also take a seat on the TickSmith management board and look forward to working closely together.”
Francis Wenzel, CEO and co-founder of TickSmith, said: “Market participants recognise the competitive advantage that can be gained from a next generation capital markets data lake, not just in Europe and North America, but increasingly on a global basis. As venture capital specialists within the capital markets technology space, Illuminate Financial are well positioned to help us further develop our flagship product, Tickvault, as we continue to build an international client base.”