Utah-based AI-FinTech, Databento, has Landed a $97 Million Series B Funding to Build-out its Global Market-data Infrastructure

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

✅ New Enterprise Associates led the $97 million in Series B financing for Salt Lake City-based Databento, with participation from DRW Venture Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Tribe Capital, and other investors;

✅ The AI-FinTech data company says it reached profitability with only 24 employees, increased revenue to 6.65 times vs. its prior-year level, and attracted more than $300 million of investor demand for the financing;

✅ Databento plans to use the new capital to expand into additional asset classes and international markets, operate from more than 20 data centers worldwide within six months and deploy more than 100 petabytes of additional storage capacity; and

✅ The company currently reports $129 million in total funding but did not disclose its valuation, the percentage of ownership acquired by investors, or how much of the new capital will be spent in Utah — if any.

22 July 2026 — SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City-based Databento has raised $97 million in Series B financing after reaching profitability, a combination that makes this transaction fundamentally different from the typical venture-backed company raising money to extend its financial runway.

According to the funding news release, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the financing, with participation from DRW Venture Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Tribe Capital, and several other existing and strategic investors.

The company also said it

• Reached profitability with only 24 employees,
• Increased revenue to 6.65 times the prior-year level,
• Has retained more than 97% of its enterprise customers since inception, and (as noted in the company blog post about the funding),
• Did so "... without dipping into our last round of funding."

Impressive.

In other words, Databento is not a company that needed $97 million to survive.

It was describing a company that could afford to be selective about whose money it accepted, how much capital it was willing to take, and what it expected to receive beyond the money itself.

So what does Databento actually do; what does it sell?

In the words of Christina Qi, CEO and Co-Founder of Databento:

"Every firm in finance depends on market data, but accessing it has been one of the industry's longest-running bottlenecks. For decades, it's meant months of procurement and integration work just to get to the starting line. Databento was built by practitioners across quant trading and high-frequency market making to eliminate this overhead, making institutional-grade market data available on demand. Our growth has driven a shift in how teams expect to acquire and work with market data, and this round positions us to lead it globally."

In simplest terms, Databento sells super-fast access to investment trading data. {More on this below.}

$97 Million Raised, but over $300 Million in Investor Interest

According to both the news release and blog post, Databento's Series B round attracted more than $300 million of investor demand, more than 3X the amount the company ultimately accepted.

To me, the difference between those two figures is financially meaningful, especially when considering the investor-stack in this current funding round.

According to the company's Form D Rule 506(b) filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Databento officially raised $97,025,539 from 19 different participating investors.

The first stock sale for the Series B funding occurred on 29 April 2026, over two months prior to the SEC filing (something not unusual in Reg D fundings), but indicatitave that the financing had been underway for over two months before the public announcement.

The filing also says the offering included equity and securities converted in connection with the transaction, which suggests that not every dollar reported in the filing arrived as new cash when the round closed.

That said, what Databento did not disclose in the SEC filing, blog post, or news release were:

• Its pre- or post-money valuation;
• The percentage of the company purchased by investors;
• The price paid per share;
• Whether existing shareholders sold shares through the transaction; or
• The company’s revenue in dollars.

Such data points are important, but not crucial to understand at this point in Databento's journey either.

In connection with this funding round, Rick Yang, an NEA partner and the firm’s head of technology, will join Databento’s board of directors.

Additionally, fellow NEA partner (Danielle Lay) will become a board observer.

From 24 Employees to Over 20 Data Centers

To me, the proposed scale of Databento’s expansion may be the most consequential part of the announcement as the company said it plans to operate its infrastructure from more than 20 data centers worldwide within six months.

Contextually, the company did not disclose how many data centers it currently operates today, or where, so it's impossible to know if that's a 4X expansion or a 15% expansion.

However, Databento Co-Founder, Luca Lin, recently shared on LinkedIn that the company

• Currently serves clients in 189 countries, and
• Expects that "In the coming twelve months, our real-time gateways will be within 30 (microseconds) of 88% of our customers over public internet routes."

Given Lin's LinkedIn comment and the type of hyper-critical financial data Databento provide its customers, I would have guessed that the company already had four fault-tolerant and mirrored data centers today: in Salt Lake City, and one each in three primary global financial centers: New York City, Chicago, and Berlin, Germany.

And lo and behold, that's exactly where Databento's "Wall Street–tied" data centers are located — NYC, Chi-town, and Berlin — as shown in the company graphic below.

However, in my research, I've since learned from a four-month-old LinkedIn post by CEO Qi that:

"Databento is onboarding the following data centers: LD4, LSE, LON2, Basildon, HKEX, HK5, JPX, Stockholm, ZH4, IT3, with more to come. 🇬🇧🇭🇰🇯🇵🇸🇪🇨🇭🇮🇹"

And that was four months ago.

So ... have those new data centers already been "lit up" already or was Qi writing in future-tense knowing that the Series B funding was underway? Honestly, I have no idea.

What I do know is that Databento also announced that it has secured more than 100 petabytes of additional usable storage capacity, more than doubling its previous footprint, while beginning to expand its market coverage in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Taken together, it's clear that the $97 million financing is not simply money for adding salespeople, buying advertising, or opening conventional branch offices.

It's capital intended to expand the company’s physical and digital infrastructure across markets and continents.

And that introduces the central tension inside the financing as Databento is already profitable ... with just 24 employees.

This suggests that it must now manage an infrastructure and employee expansion that could substantially increase its fixed costs, technical complexity, and operational responsibilities.

As such, the question is no longer whether Databento can operate efficiently at startup scale.

It is whether the company can preserve such discipline while building infrastructure and headcount designed to serve institutions operating throughout the global financial system.

Selling the Plumbing Beneath Modern Financial Markets

Since its founding in 2019, Databento has provided clients with real-time and historical financial-market data covering equities, futures and options.

Its customers use application programming interfaces (APIs) to feed prices, quotations, trades, order books and other market information directly into trading systems, research platforms, risk-management tools and financial software.

In plain English, Databento sells part of the plumbing beneath modern financial markets.

It is not, however, a brokerage, investment fund, or a consumer stock-trading application.

Instead, the company captures information from exchanges and distributes that data through a common technical platform, reducing the need for customers to negotiate, license and integrate separate systems for every trading venue or asset class.

According to Databento, over 3,000 companies use its services today, including

• Hedge funds,
• Proprietary trading firms,
• Broker-dealers,
• Financial-technology companies,
• Commodities traders,
• Digital-asset businesses, and
• Artificial-intelligence laboratories.

However, recent LinkedIn posts say its total customer set is actually north of 30,000 clients. Then again, it's also shared that it is adding 300 to 400 new clients daily.

Moving to Utah and Beyond

To be clear, beyond explaining its plans to expand its data center footprint, Databento did not say where it plans to spend the $97 million.

Nor did it announce a major Utah hiring campaign, a Salt Lake City data center, or a large physical expansion within the state.

So don't expect that $97 million to circulate through Utah’s local economy as much of the new infrastructure will likely be deployed near trading venues, financial centers, and customers around the world.

Then again, it may bank in Utah.

But why Utah, especially since Databento got its start in Boston, Massachusetts?

Although born in Beijing, CEO Qi was raised in Utah after her parents moved to Cache Valley to attend Utah State University.

Qi went on to earn a bachelor's degree in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2013, but not before starting Boston-based Domeyard in 2012 as a quantitative, high-frequency trading firm that, at its height, was moving $1 billion in securities daily (before Qi and her co-founders shuttered the firm in 2020).

That was the same year she co-founded Databento in Boston.

But roughly two year later (in April 2022), Qi shared on LinkedIn that "I realized that it was time to move back to my hometown in Utah, to be closer to my family."

It was then that the company's headquarters moved to Salt Lake City as well.

Final Thoughts

In closing, if Databento has NOT been on your radar previously, hopefully it is now.

And if it's not achieved that mythical unicorn status yet — being valued at $1 billion or higher — don't worry.

I suspect that valuation will be reached in the very near future. And beyond.

In the meantime, this Utah-HQ'd FinTech is clearly on a rocketship trajectory, a classic J-Curve ride that is "up and to the right."

So pay attention; Databento is definitely a firm to watch.

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