S&P Global’s $1.8 Billion Acquisition of With Intelligence Marks Major Expansion into Private Markets Intelligence

In a strategic transaction that underscores the accelerating importance of private markets intelligence, S&P Global has announced its definitive agreement to acquire With Intelligence from a consortium led by Motive Partners for $1.8 billion. The deal positions S&P Global as one of the most comprehensive providers of private markets intelligence and marks a significant milestone in the company’s strategic expansion into the rapidly growing alternatives sector.

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The Strategic Rationale Behind the Acquisition

The acquisition comes at a pivotal moment for the asset management industry, as private markets continue their explosive growth trajectory. Industry analysts project that alternative assets will approach $40 trillion by the end of the decade, with some estimates suggesting private market assets under management could reach as high as $65 trillion by 2032. This represents a compound annual growth rate of approximately nine to ten percent, more than double the rate expected for public market assets.

For S&P Global, a company already renowned for its expertise in credit ratings, benchmarks, and analytics, the addition of With Intelligence significantly enhances its capabilities across the entire private markets ecosystem. The combination brings together S&P Global’s established reputation and trusted brand with With Intelligence’s proprietary data and deep relationships across general partners, limited partners, and intermediaries.

“Private markets is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing areas of global finance and providing innovative and differentiated data, benchmarks and workflow solutions in this space is a key strategic priority for S&P Global,” said Martina Cheung, President and CEO of S&P Global. The acquisition enables the company to extend its legacy of transparency and analytical rigor from public debt markets into the increasingly important private markets space.

With Intelligence: A Proven Leader in Alternative Assets Data

Founded by Charlie Kerr in 1998, With Intelligence has built a formidable reputation over more than two decades as a leading provider of critical, insight-enriched data for alternative asset classes. The company serves approximately 3,000 customers globally, including institutional investors, fund managers, and advisors across multiple asset classes including private equity, private credit, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure, and family offices.

What distinguishes With Intelligence in the marketplace is its proprietary, actionable intelligence sourced directly from the market participants themselves—both limited partners and general partners. This direct-from-source approach provides a level of authenticity and timeliness that is particularly valuable in the historically opaque private markets sector.

The company’s extensive data assets are impressive in both scope and depth. With Intelligence maintains coverage of approximately 30,000 investors spanning private equity, private credit, infrastructure, hedge funds, and family offices. The platform tracks around 30,000 managers and 70,000 funds, with particular focus on the largest and most influential funds globally. Perhaps most notably, the database includes information on over 350,000 deals, providing comprehensive visibility into transaction activity across the alternatives landscape.

With Intelligence is home to several well-established and respected brands in the financial data industry, including SPS, The Deal, Highworth Research, and Eurekahedge. This portfolio of specialized databases and research platforms has been carefully built and refined over three decades at the heart of the alternatives marketplace.

Financial Terms and Expected Contributions

The $1.8 billion acquisition is expected to bring substantial value to S&P Global’s financial profile. With Intelligence is projected to generate approximately $130 million in revenue in 2025, with annual contract value growth in the high teens—a testament to the strong demand for private markets intelligence and the quality of With Intelligence’s offerings.

Following its 2023 investment from Motive Partners, along with reinvestment from management and significant minority investor ICG (which has been invested since 2020), With Intelligence has experienced accelerated growth and evolution. The company has transformed from a high-quality information services business into a comprehensive data and analytics company with what Motive Partners describes as “real scarcity value” in the marketplace.

The transaction is expected to close in late 2025 or early 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. From a financial perspective, S&P Global anticipates the acquisition will be slightly dilutive to its GAAP diluted earnings per share but accretive to adjusted diluted EPS in 2027, with adjusted figures excluding the impact of amortization of acquired intangibles and deal-related costs.

Strategic Integration and Enhanced Offerings

The integration of With Intelligence into S&P Global Market Intelligence will create powerful synergies across the entire private markets value chain. The combination will deliver enhanced capabilities across three critical operational areas for asset managers and investors.

In the Front Office, customers will gain access to With Intelligence’s proprietary fund data and relationship intelligence between limited partners and general partners, complemented by S&P Global’s extensive private company and transaction data available through platforms like S&P Capital IQ Pro. This integration will provide investment professionals with unprecedented visibility into fundraising opportunities, deal origination prospects, and market dynamics.

For the Middle Office, the combined offering will bring together With Intelligence’s benchmarking and performance data with S&P Global’s workflow and valuation solutions, including tools like iLEVEL and its valuation services. This integration will significantly enrich portfolio management, monitoring, and performance analysis capabilities for asset managers navigating the complexities of private market investments.

In the Back Office, established solutions like WSO will continue to support fund administrators and managers with streamlined fund activity tracking, performance reporting, and enhanced transparency for clients and regulators. These operational tools are critical for managing the unique reporting and compliance requirements associated with private market investments.

Saugata Saha, President of S&P Global Market Intelligence and Chief Enterprise Data Officer of S&P Global, emphasized the complementary nature of the acquisition: “We’re deeply excited about With Intelligence’s proprietary data, insights and expertise—and even more so about what this combination unlocks for our customers and the broader private markets. From our private company data on S&P Capital IQ Pro, to differentiated intelligence across private equity and private credit and integrated solutions like iLEVEL, Valuations and WSO—With Intelligence’s capabilities complement our portfolio and enhance our ability to deliver the clarity and confidence needed in today’s increasingly complex private markets.”

The Broader Private Markets Intelligence Landscape

S&P Global’s acquisition of With Intelligence occurs against a backdrop of intense consolidation and strategic positioning within the private markets data and intelligence sector. The deal reflects broader industry recognition that data and analytics have become mission-critical infrastructure for participants in alternative investments.

Notably, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, acquired Preqin for $3.2 billion in 2024, completing that transaction in early 2025. BlackRock’s acquisition of the private markets data provider was explicitly designed to enhance its Aladdin technology platform and establish what CEO Larry Fink described as the ability to “index the private markets.” The Preqin acquisition followed BlackRock’s earlier $12.5 billion purchase of Global Infrastructure Partners, demonstrating the firm’s aggressive expansion into alternative investments.

These major acquisitions highlight how essential comprehensive, accurate, and timely private markets data has become for asset managers, institutional investors, and advisors. As traditional public market returns have faced pressure and companies increasingly opt to remain private for longer periods, the ability to access, analyze, and benchmark private investments has transitioned from a competitive advantage to a fundamental requirement.

Industry research supports this trend. According to Bain & Company, private market assets under management will grow at more than twice the rate of public assets, potentially reaching $60 to $65 trillion by 2032. This growth is being driven by several converging factors: institutional investors seeking higher yields amid public market volatility, the expanding retail investor base accessing alternatives through new vehicle structures, and the increasing tendency of companies to remain private or return to private ownership.

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Complementary Strategic Initiatives

The With Intelligence acquisition represents one component of S&P Global’s broader strategic push into private markets intelligence. The transaction will complement several recent initiatives announced by the company, demonstrating a coordinated approach to building comprehensive capabilities in this space.

S&P Global recently announced a significant collaboration with Cambridge Associates and Mercer to deliver comprehensive private markets performance analytics. This joint initiative is scheduled to launch in beta by year-end 2025 and will provide institutional investors with sophisticated benchmarking and performance measurement tools specifically designed for private market portfolios.

Additionally, S&P Global has partnered with NewVest to launch the S&P Private Equity 50 Indices. These innovative benchmarks are designed to measure the performance of 50 of the largest available private equity funds, providing a standardized reference point for investors seeking to evaluate their private equity allocations against market performance. These indices address a long-standing challenge in private markets: the lack of widely accepted, transparent benchmarks comparable to those that exist in public markets.

These complementary initiatives, combined with the With Intelligence acquisition, position S&P Global to offer an integrated suite of data, analytics, benchmarks, and workflow solutions that spans the entire private markets investment lifecycle—from initial fundraising and asset allocation through deal execution, portfolio management, performance measurement, and reporting.

Perspectives from Deal Architects

The transaction has been met with enthusiasm from leadership across both organizations. Charlie Kerr, Founder and CEO of With Intelligence, expressed confidence in the strategic fit: “This is testament to the hard work of our fantastic team, including our partnership with Motive Partners, in building a differentiated business within private markets and alternatives to power smarter investment decisions, and we look forward to bringing our data and intelligence to a broader customer group as part of S&P Global. Joining S&P Global is a key milestone in our growth and one we are very excited about as it allows us to accelerate our strategy on a global scale by combining our proprietary datasets, benchmarks and relationships across GPs and LPs with S&P Global’s legacy, trust and reach.”

Rob Heyvaert, Founder and Managing Partner of Motive Partners, highlighted the transaction as validation of his firm’s investment approach: “Our partnership with Charlie and the broader With Intelligence team exemplifies Motive’s Investor-Operator-Innovator model in action, as we’ve built an extremely successful business at the heart of one of the most dynamic transformations in financial services. This transaction is a case study of the impact of our proven model, and a powerful proof point of our investment lifecycle thesis on data and analytics. Together with the With Intelligence team, we transformed a high-quality information services business into a true data and analytics company with real scarcity value. S&P Global is the right home to take With Intelligence’s success to its next phase—cementing its role at the center of the private markets data revolution.”

Market Dynamics Driving Demand

The robust appetite for private markets intelligence is being driven by fundamental shifts in how capital is allocated and invested globally. Several key trends are converging to create unprecedented demand for the types of data and analytics that With Intelligence provides.

First, the universe of publicly traded companies has been shrinking as a percentage of the overall corporate landscape. Many high-growth companies are choosing to remain private for longer periods, accessing ample private capital without the regulatory burdens and disclosure requirements of public markets. This trend has made access to private markets data increasingly essential for investors seeking the best opportunities and highest growth potential.

Second, institutional investors including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, and insurance companies are significantly increasing their allocations to alternative assets. These sophisticated investors are seeking the diversification benefits, return potential, and inflation hedging characteristics that private markets can offer. However, making informed allocation decisions requires robust data on fund performance, manager track records, fee structures, and market trends.

Third, there has been an emerging democratization of access to alternative investments, with high-net-worth individuals and even retail investors gaining exposure to private markets through new vehicle structures such as interval funds, tender offer funds, and business development companies. This expanding investor base requires education, transparency, and reliable data to make appropriate investment decisions.

Finally, the growing complexity of the private markets ecosystem itself—spanning private equity, venture capital, private credit, infrastructure, real estate, hedge funds, and other strategies—demands sophisticated data infrastructure to navigate effectively. Fund managers, limited partners, placement agents, consultants, and other market participants all require comprehensive, accurate intelligence to execute their respective roles efficiently.

Technology and Data Integration Considerations

The successful integration of With Intelligence into S&P Global’s technology ecosystem will be critical to realizing the full value of the acquisition. S&P Global operates sophisticated data platforms including S&P Capital IQ Pro, its flagship solution for financial intelligence and analytics. Integrating With Intelligence’s proprietary databases, analytical tools, and workflow solutions with these existing platforms will require careful planning and execution.

One key advantage S&P Global brings to this integration is its established expertise in managing large-scale, mission-critical data operations. The company has decades of experience aggregating, cleaning, standardizing, and delivering financial data to demanding institutional clients. This experience will be valuable as the company works to harmonize data standards, ensure data quality, and create seamless user experiences across its expanded private markets offerings.

The integration will also need to respect and preserve what makes With Intelligence’s data valuable: its direct relationships with general partners and limited partners who provide proprietary information. Maintaining these relationships and the trust they represent will be essential to ensuring continued data quality and coverage going forward.

Regulatory and Transparency Implications

S&P Global’s expanded presence in private markets intelligence has important implications for transparency and potentially for regulation of this sector. Historically, private markets have been characterized by information asymmetry, with significant disparities in the quality and quantity of information available to different market participants.

By bringing its established commitment to transparency, standardization, and independent analysis to private markets, S&P Global has the potential to enhance market efficiency and investor protection. The company’s track record in public debt markets—where its credit ratings have provided independent risk assessments for decades—positions it well to extend similar principles to private market investments.

Regulators in various jurisdictions have been increasingly focused on private markets as the sector has grown in both size and systemic importance. Enhanced data availability and standardization could support regulatory oversight while also enabling more efficient capital allocation. The transaction may also prompt discussions about appropriate data standards, disclosure requirements, and transparency expectations for private market participants.

Advisor and Transaction Details

The transaction was supported by a distinguished group of financial and legal advisors. Citi served as S&P Global’s lead financial advisor, with Jefferies also providing financial advisory services. Clifford Chance acted as legal counsel to S&P Global. On the With Intelligence side, Centerview Partners served as financial advisor, while Proskauer and Joelson provided legal counsel. Oliver Wyman acted as strategic advisor to With Intelligence, and McKinsey & Company advised S&P Global on strategic aspects of the transaction.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Private Markets Intelligence

As the transaction moves toward closing, attention will turn to execution and integration. S&P Global will need to maintain and strengthen With Intelligence’s existing customer relationships while introducing these clients to the broader suite of S&P Global capabilities. Similarly, S&P Global’s existing clients will need to be educated about the enhanced private markets offerings now available to them.

The combined organization will face competition from other major players investing heavily in private markets data and analytics, including BlackRock with its newly acquired Preqin platform, as well as specialized providers and emerging technology companies. Continued innovation in data collection, analytics methodologies, and delivery platforms will be essential to maintaining competitive advantage.

Longer term, the success of this acquisition will be measured by several factors: the ability to achieve revenue synergies through cross-selling, the development of innovative new products that leverage the combined datasets, the retention of key talent and client relationships, and ultimately, the value delivered to customers navigating the complexities of private markets investing.

For the broader private markets ecosystem, S&P Global’s enhanced capabilities should contribute to greater transparency, improved benchmarking, and more efficient capital allocation. As alternative investments continue their growth trajectory and become increasingly central to institutional portfolios, the infrastructure supporting this sector—including data, analytics, and intelligence—will play an ever more critical role.

The $1.8 billion acquisition of With Intelligence represents S&P Global’s clear statement of strategic intent: to establish itself as an indispensable partner to the private markets ecosystem, extending its trusted brand and analytical expertise from its traditional strongholds in public markets into the dynamic, fast-growing world of alternative investments. As this transaction moves toward completion and integration, it will shape the competitive landscape of private markets intelligence for years to come.

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By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

16th October, 2025