A startup that wants to help Wall Street clean its data just landed $10 million in funding
- Data solutions provider Crux raised $10 million in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs.
- The New York-based firm wants to "make data delightful" by taking the grunt work out for Wall Street.
Crux, a data solutions provider, announced it raised $10 million in a Series A fundraising round led by Goldman Sachs.
The company, which was founded by Phillip Brittan, a three-time entrepreneur and former chief technology officer of financial juggernaut Thomson Reuters, is looking to address the pain points many Wall Street firms face when they're trying to make use of data.
"We want to make data delightful," Brittan told Business Insider.
Crux announced the funding round backed by Goldman and a "small handful" of other strategic investors. The company declined to comment on its valuation.
Data has become increasingly important to Wall Street. As noted by a recent report from Boston-based money manager State Street, data has become a vital way for firms to differentiate themselves and better serve clients.
"Using big data and digital technologies,we are able to price portfolios up to 30 minutes faster - which has had a transformative impact for our clients." Liz Roaldsen, head of digital transformation at State Street, said.
However, acquiring data, storing it, and then making sense of it, is a timely process for many firms and often draws resources away from actually figuring out ways to execute strategies based off the data you have. Crux wants to take that non-differentiated grunt work off the hands of Wall Street's hedge funds, banks, and private equity firms.
"Just like how a logistics firm helps manufacturing company orchestrate supply chains, we are orchestrating the supply chain of data," Brittan said.
As such, Crux doesn't just connect its customers with data from providers. Instead, it helps guide its clients through the entire data supply chain, from acquiring data from providers to cleaning and preparing the data to then packaging it to clients in a way that's relevant for them.
"If you're a hedge fund, for instance, you're going to spend most of your time cleaning data, storing it, and putting IT resources behind protecting it," Brittan said. "That takes weeks of toil and shifts focus away from actually creating alpha-driving solutions with that data that can differentiate the firm from the competition."
The deployment of new technologies such as data, according to Broadridge, a financial consultancy and tech provider, will take place through a mixture of in-house development and third party partnerships.
"Given the imperative to cut costs and the opportunities offered by new technologies, many institutions are now actively seeking to embrace partners," the report titled "Pathways to Profit" said. "They are leveraging partnerships to add innovation in areas where they lack expertise or scale, or to enable them to focus the expertise they do have on their most differentiating areas."