Alternative data
What is
alternative data
RenaAi builds alternative data with its own methodology and connects it to global financial markets. This page covers the starting point: what alternative data is and why it is worth paying for.
We build three kinds of alternative data: market-area (small-business alternative credit scoring), equity and patent data. Rating agencies, lenders, asset managers and investors receive it via API and data feeds. We also explain why the world's largest asset manager spent $3.2B on this.
At a glance
- Definition
- Data from outside a company’s own disclosures that tells you about its condition
- Vs. financial statements
- No need to wait for filings; works where no financial statements exist
- What RenaAi builds
- Market-area · equity · patent alternative data
- Who uses it
- Rating agencies · lenders · asset managers · investors
- Delivery
- REST API · data feed
Definition
In one line
Any data gathered from outside the numbers a company discloses that tells you about its condition.
An analogy
If financial statements are like judging a person's health from their annual checkup report alone, alternative data is looking at how many steps they walk each day, what they eat and where they live. A checkup report comes once a year, and someone who has never had a checkup has none at all.
Data 'inside' financial statements
- Revenue · operating profit · assets
- Quarterly and annual filings
- Audited financial statements
- Credit ratings · loan history
Anyone can see it, it is already priced in, and it does not exist at all for companies without filings.
Data 'outside' financial statements = alternative data
- How many people walk past the shop
- Survival rate of the same business type on this street
- In how many countries a patent has been filed
- Whether competitors can design around the technology
No need to wait for filings, and it works where no financial statements exist.
Value
Why people pay for it
1
Public information is already priced in
Look at the same data as everyone else, and you reach the same conclusions.
Everyone reads financial statements. So the information in them is already reflected in stock prices and interest rates. To judge better than others, you need data others are not looking at. That is the first reason alternative data has value.
2
It makes the unassessable assessable
It is less about predicting better and more about widening what can be assessed at all.
Some subjects have no financial statements at all: a first-year small business, a patent sitting in a drawer, a private company. Until now they were "not assessable," so capital did not reach them. Alternative data brings them into the scope of assessment for the first time. This is where RenaAi stands.
3
It moves before financial statements do
Results come out long after the quarter ends.
Signs that a shop is struggling show up before its sales fall. Nearby shops close one by one, foot traffic thins, new openings stop. Financial statements only confirm the outcome months later. That is why data that sees first has value.
Examples
What counts as alternative data
| Type | What it looks at | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Satellite imagery | Count cars in retail parking lots to estimate quarterly results in advance | Overseas example |
| Card transactions | Track sales trends by brand in real time using anonymized, aggregated payment data | Overseas example |
| Job postings | Read a company’s investment direction from which roles it hires and how many | Overseas example |
| Market-area data | Estimate default risk for businesses with no credit history from location, business type and nearby openings and closures | Built by RenaAi |
| Equity alternative data | Normalize filings, prices and trading flows to catch changes at listed companies before financial statements do | Built by RenaAi |
| Patent intelligence | Measure the real competitiveness of tech companies through claim scope, overseas family and design-around difficulty | Built by RenaAi |
The first three buy existing data and interpret it. The last three create data that did not exist. That difference is where RenaAi stands.
Case
Why BlackRock spent $3.2B
on a data company
On June 30, 2024, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, announced an all-cash acquisition of the private-markets data company Preqin.
- 1
It bought a data company, not an asset manager
When the world’s largest asset manager spent $3.2B in cash, what it bought was neither funds nor an investment team but data. The price showed where the competitive edge in asset management has moved.
- 2
It was a market without financial statements
The private markets Preqin covers (PE, private credit, real estate, infrastructure) have no public disclosure, unlike listed markets. In other words, BlackRock bought data from outside the financial statements. That matches the definition of alternative data exactly.
- 3
The goal was indices and products
It does not end with collecting data. Data makes indices possible, indices make benchmarks possible, and benchmarks make products sellable. BlackRock secured the starting point of the data → index → product chain.
- 4
It was not a one-off
MSCI acquired Burgiss, a private-asset data company, investing a cumulative $910M. The leaders in indices and analytics are moving in the same direction.
Deal summary
- Purchase price
- $3.2bn · £2.55bn · all cash
- Preqin annual revenue
- $240M · 2024 · recurring
- Revenue multiple
- ~13x
- Announcement → close
- 9 months · March 2025
- Data held
- 190,000 funds · 60,000 managers · 30,000 investors
In short
The world's largest asset manager paid 13 times revenue for “data that makes a market without financial statements assessable.”
What RenaAi aims to do with small-business market areas and patents is the same kind of work. The difference is the subject: instead of private equity funds, neighborhood shops and patents sitting in drawers.
Market size
How big is the market
One caveat first: the numbers vary widely by research firm. Rather than picking the largest figure, we list them as they are.
| Source | Scope | Current | Forecast | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BlackRock (own estimate) | Private-markets data TAM | $8B | $18B by 2030 | 12% a year |
| Grand View Research | All alternative data | $18.8B (2025) | $135.7B by 2030 | ~37% |
| Fortune Business Insights | All alternative data | $19.4B (2025) | - | ~34% |
| IMARC Group | All alternative data | $12B (2025) | - | ~34% |
Which number to trust
Private research firms define the scope differently, so their figures vary widely. The most credible is the estimate of the party that actually spent money. BlackRock sized the private-markets data market at $8B, projected it to reach $18B by 2030, and deployed $3.2B.
The bigger picture
The assets the data supports are far larger than the data market itself. BlackRock expects alternative assets to reach around $40T by 2030. Data is a precondition for that market to function.
Note: The figures above summarize each firm's public announcements and press materials; scope definitions and methods differ. They are not RenaAi's own estimates, and we do not guarantee any specific figure.
Why it is needed
Deals stall because of an information gap
Buyers and sellers see the same asset differently. If you do not know the price, you cannot sell; if you cannot trust the price, you cannot buy. Assets that do not trade in capital markets are usually assets no one had a way to price.
The seller
Knows the asset's real value, but has no language to prove it. The same goes for a music catalog, a patent or a thriving shop.
The buyer
Has the will and the capital, but no basis to verify. Without a basis, buyers either lowball the price or do not buy at all.
Alternative data narrows this gap. It attaches observable signals even to subjects with no financial statements, so both sides see the same thing. But data alone is not enough. It takes people who interpret the numbers and stand behind them for the value to be accepted by institutions.
The people who set the value
Data narrows the gap, expert valuation builds trust, and trades happen on that trust. That is why we start with small-business credit scoring and move on to music IP and private assets. The assets differ, but the reason they are stuck is the same.
Where we stand
So, Korea, and us
Abroad, satellite imagery and card payment data are already sold as products. Yet Korea still has no standard data for judging small-business credit, and no standard indicator for measuring patent quality.
Not so much for lack of data, but because there was no method for translating scattered data into the language of credit and value. RenaAi builds that translator, and has demonstrated the method itself through patents and research papers.
Data vendors
Collect existing data and process it for sale. Interpretation and accountability are left to the client.
RenaAi
Creates data that did not exist, makes judgments with it, and takes responsibility for acting on them and for the results.
Sources
- BlackRock: press release on completing the Preqin acquisition· Purchase price £2.55B (~$3.2B) · private-markets data TAM $8B · $18B by 2030 · alternative assets projected at $40T
- Preqin: acquisition announcement (2024-06-30)· 190,000 funds · 60,000 managers · 30,000 investors · 2024 revenue ~$240M
- MSCI: Burgiss acquisition announcement· Remaining stake $697M · cumulative $913M
- Grand View Research · Fortune Business Insights · IMARC Group: alternative data market size estimates· Scope definitions differ by firm, so the figures vary widely