Activ Financial, a global provider of fully managed low-latency market data solutions, today announced that Bessemer Venture Partners has made a minority equity investment in the firm.
ACTIV will use the proceeds to drive new customer acquisition, power continued product innovation and meet the escalating market demand for quality, cost-effective and ultra-low latency market data solutions. The demand is being fueled by the tremendous growth in market data volumes and move toward co-location facilities to support advanced and profitable global trading strategies.
"We are happy to be able to complete this financing for the clear leader in low-latency market data solutions," said Rob Stavis, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "ACTIV's best-of-breed technology and strong customer loyalty portends a rapid increase in industry adoption and growth. It's unusual to find an opportunity to invest in a company with the type of growth, broad product line and time-tested model that ACTIV offers. We see the company as a cornerstone of our portfolio of financial services investments."
The investment follows a year in which ACTIV significantly grew its client base, expanded its partner ecosystem and global footprint, and continued its strong commitment to research and development. ACTIV now serves over 300 customers worldwide and manages more than 130 feed handlers and nearly 20 data centers spread across five continents. 2009 highlights included:
- New support for local and global access across major market centers in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America
- Launch of European operations and the appointment of David Hann as managing director EMEA
- Introduction of Tokyo co-location for TSE and MPU-based Arrowhead solution
- A new data center launch in Korea to provide global and local support to power automated, algorithmic and high-frequency trading in the Korean marketplace
- Investment in quality leaders with proven market data expertise to ensure exceptional customer support, including Scott Hall, managing director of sales North America, and Steve Williams, VVP of Professional Services
- Successful and fruitful partnerships with Atrium Networks, Ballista, Equinix, KVH, NTT and more
"Companies today require fast access to global market data, but solutions must offer a way to control escalating costs in the face of the explosion in message rates," said Frank Piasecki, co-founder and president of ACTIV Financial. "ACTIV is uniquely suited to manage these evolving market challenges. BVP's expertise in managing high-growth financial technology companies and their 100 year history of stability makes them an ideal partner to help propel ACTIV and our customers into the future. We look forward to continuing to capitalize on demand and help sophisticated investors meet their complex global data and trading requirements."
ACTIV is one of the only vendors to offer best-in-class ultra low-latency and hosted/co-located delivery architectures on top of traditional market data services, including a quote terminal GUI and high-quality consolidated feed delivery. The ACTIV platform includes underlying message oriented middleware for enterprise date aggregation and distribution, hardware acceleration components and a robust set of value add applications such as news and tick and historical database servers. The company's 40+ ISV partnerships are a testament to the value ACTIV delivers to a host of financial market data applications and providers.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.