Bloomberg strengthens private markets platform with Canoe Intelligence acquisition

Bloomberg has agreed to acquire private markets data specialist Canoe Intelligence in a move that expands its capabilities across the private capital investment lifecycle and strengthens its offering for institutional investors.

The acquisition, announced on Wednesday, builds on Bloomberg’s strategy to integrate private markets data, analytics and portfolio management tools with its established public markets platform. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Canoe provides AI-powered software that automates the collection, processing and delivery of private markets data for institutional investors. The platform processes more than 1.5 million documents each month across over 44,000 private funds and serves more than 500 clients representing in excess of $11tn in assets under service.

The acquisition follows the launch earlier this year of a certified integration between Canoe and Bloomberg PORT Enterprise, enabling clients to incorporate permissioned private fund data into portfolio analysis alongside public market holdings.

Following completion of the deal, Bloomberg plans to combine Canoe’s data infrastructure with its own private markets platform, which currently includes information on more than three million private companies, 50,000 private funds and 16,000 private direct loans.

For private equity investors, the combined platform is intended to streamline workflows spanning both pre-investment due diligence and post-investment portfolio monitoring. Bloomberg said the enhanced offering will provide deeper fund screening and benchmarking tools, more automated portfolio reporting, improved risk analysis and greater transparency across public and private assets.

The company also plans to incorporate Canoe’s capabilities into ASKB, Bloomberg’s AI-powered conversational platform, allowing users to search, analyse and generate insights across private and public markets through natural language queries.

Canoe has become a widely used technology platform among general partners, limited partners, wealth managers, fund administrators and family offices by automating the extraction and standardisation of data from private fund reporting documents.

The company was incubated by principals of 10East and 22C Capital and has attracted backing from a number of prominent private markets investors, including Blackstone Innovations Investments, Carlyle AlpInvest, Hamilton Lane, Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Eight Roads, F-Prime and Nasdaq Ventures.

Bloomberg said the acquisition reflects growing demand from institutional investors for integrated technology that provides a consolidated view of public and private market investments as private capital allocations continue to increase.

Jefferies acted as exclusive financial adviser to Canoe Intelligence, while Cooley served as the company’s legal adviser.