Alternative Data Market: Big Data Expansion, AI Insights & Predictive Investment Strategies

According to IMARC Group's latest research publication, global alternative data market size reached USD 8,889.1 Million in 2025. Looking forward, IMARC Group expects the market to reach USD 1,81,103.5 Million by 2034, exhibiting a growth rate of 35.18% during 2026-2034.

How AI is Reshaping the Future of Alternative Data Market

• Automated Data Collection and Processing: AI-powered web scraping and automated extraction systems gather massive unstructured data from social media, IoT devices, and public records. Machine learning converts raw data into structured formats, reducing manual effort by 40% and accelerating insights.
• Advanced Pattern Recognition and Predictive Analytics: Deep learning identifies hidden correlations in alternative datasets that analysts miss. Over 70% of providers integrate AI for processing, improving forecast accuracy by 15% for demand planning and order fulfillment.
• Real-Time ESG and Sustainability Monitoring: AI analyzes satellite imagery, emissions data, and social sentiment to track corporate sustainability. Hedge funds spend millions on data budgets, using AI-powered ESG signals for investment decisions and climate risk assessment.
• Natural Language Processing for Sentiment Analysis: NLP algorithms process millions of social media posts, news articles, and regulatory filings to gauge market sentiment. Financial institutions achieve 20-30% improvement in commodity price forecasting through sentiment-driven models.

• Signal-as-a-Service and Value Chain Integration: Vendors apply proprietary AI models to generate actionable signals instead of raw data. Dataminr achieved USD 200 million ARR with 80% gross margins, demonstrating AI-driven analytics' profitability and scalability.

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Alternative Data Industry Overview:

The alternative data landscape is experiencing explosive growth as investment firms, retailers, and enterprises embrace non-traditional data sources for competitive advantage. Financial institutions now allocate millions annually to alternative data, with 67% of hedge funds already deploying these insights and 94% planning increased budgets. BlackRock's USD 3.2 billion acquisition of Preqin signals the strategic importance of data platforms, while companies like Dataminr secure USD 185 million in funding to scale AI capabilities. Cloud-native pipelines and API-driven platforms are democratizing access, enabling organizations to integrate credit card transactions, satellite imagery, geolocation records, and social sentiment into decision-making. The rise of ESG investing further accelerates adoption, as investors use alternative data to verify sustainability claims and assess climate risks beyond traditional corporate disclosures.

Alternative Data Market Trends & Drivers

• The surge in hedge fund and institutional investor adoption is transforming alternative data from experimental to essential. Investment managers are shifting from traditional alpha sources to contextual data overlays, applying frameworks like UBS's "narrative alpha" that uses NLP for news sentiment analysis. Large multi-strategy funds work with dozens of data vendors simultaneously, spending millions on datasets that provide granular consumer behavior insights through credit card transactions, mobile app usage, and foot traffic analytics. Survey data reveals 78% of hedge funds integrated alternative data into investment strategies, with providers offering premium pricing for differentiated sources like specialized B2B transaction data and niche industry web scrapes. Sales cycles are shortening as sophisticated buy-side segments demand pre-integrated analytics with compliance workflows, creating opportunities for vendors who combine unique datasets with advanced AI processing capabilities.
• Digital transformation and cloud infrastructure expansion are fundamentally reshaping how organizations access and analyze alternative data. Modern cloud architectures enable real-time ingestion and elastic compute, with platforms like Microsoft Azure hosting terabytes of datasets for consumption-based pricing. The IoT revolution contributes significantly, as connected devices are expected to generate 79.4 zettabytes of data, creating unprecedented opportunities for localized, low-latency insights. E-commerce platforms report 25% of retail sales occurring online in major markets, generating valuable transaction patterns and consumer preference signals. Technology leaders invest heavily in edge computing to process IoT sensor data closer to its source, enabling instantaneous analytics for supply chain optimization and predictive maintenance. Cloud-native data pipelines reduce integration costs, making sophisticated alternative data accessible to small and medium enterprises that previously couldn't afford such capabilities.
• Regulatory evolution and ESG investing momentum are driving new applications for alternative data across industries. Environmental regulations like the EU's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive mandate transparent sustainability reporting, pushing organizations toward satellite imagery and emissions tracking for verification. Investors allocated USD 35 billion to sustainable ETFs, using alternative data to assess corporate environmental practices beyond self-reported metrics. Financial regulators including the SEC and ESMA monitor alternative data usage to prevent misuse of material non-public information, creating clearer compliance frameworks that boost market confidence. Privacy-enhancing technologies like federated learning and zero-knowledge proofs differentiate next-generation vendors, aligning with tightening data-sovereignty rules. Companies leverage blockchain-based tokenization for micro-royalty distributions, creating novel monetization channels. The convergence of regulatory clarity, sustainability priorities, and technological advancement positions alternative data as crucial infrastructure for risk management, fraud detection, and strategic planning across finance, retail, healthcare, and energy sectors.

Leading Companies Operating in the Global Alternative Data Industry:

• 1010Data Inc. (Advance Communication Corp.)
• Advan Research Corporation
• Dataminr Inc.
• Eagle Alpha
• M Science
• Nasdaq Inc.
• Preqin
• RavenPack
• The Earnest Research Company
• Thinknum Inc.

Alternative Data Market Report Segmentation:

By Data Type:

• Mobile Application Usage
• Credit and Debit Card Transactions
• Email Receipts
• Geo-location (Foot Traffic) Records
• Satellite and Weather Data
• Social and Sentiment Data
• Web Scraped Data
• Web Traffic
• Others

Credit and debit card transactions represent the largest segment, as they deliver high-frequency data offering crucial real-time consumer spending insights.

By End Use Industry:

• Transportation and Logistics
• BFSI
• Retail and ECommerce
• Energy and Utilities
• IT and Telecommunications
• Media and Entertainment
• Others

BFSI holds the largest market share, driven by extensive use of alternative data for enhanced investment strategies, credit risk profiling, fraud detection, and personalized product offerings.

Regional Insights:

• North America (United States, Canada)
• Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Others)
• Europe (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Russia, Others)
• Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Others)
• Middle East and Africa

North America dominates the market due to its advanced technology infrastructure, sophisticated financial institutions, and stable regulatory environment supporting innovation.

Recent News and Developments in Alternative Data Market

• May 2025: First Rate, a financial technology provider, launched its innovative Alts Data Management solution to transform wealth management operations. Leveraging over 15 years of alternative asset expertise, the platform simplifies managing complex alternative investment data, enhancing efficiency and insight for wealth management firms.
• April 2025: Equifax expanded its dataset and dashboard offerings on Google Cloud Marketplace, enhancing business decision-making with advanced consumer segmentation (IXI Economic Cohorts), household financial insights (Income360®, Affluence Index™), and specialized suites for automotive, financial services, and higher education sectors. New visualization tools include Campaign Insights and Portfolio Insights Dashboards.
• March 2025: Dataminr raised USD 85 million in convertible financing and credit to fuel growth, particularly expanding internationally in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Founded in 2009, it monitors real-time global events using AI to aid crisis response, serving over 800 customers.
• November 2024: RavenPack launched Bigdata.com, an AI platform for financial research powered by Vespa.ai's billion-scale vector search technology. Combining proprietary Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Vespa's SPANN-based search, Bigdata.com enables real-time, highly accurate querying of billions of financial documents with transparent source attribution.
• November 2024: Goldman Sachs leveraged alternative data, including satellite imagery and credit card transactions, to enhance predictive capabilities regarding retail trends. The firm aims to provide more accurate forecasts on consumer behavior and spending patterns for informed investment decisions.

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