WorldQuant Ventures, an angel investment firm focused on disruptive companies in technology, with a particular focus on data and finance, announced today an investment in Benzinga, a leading originator of actionable financial insights and data in high demand from the financial community. WorldQuant Ventures' investment will fuel an expansion of Benzinga's original market-moving content and data service infrastructure, allowing Benzinga to better serve its rapidly increasing demand from traders and investors.

'We're very excited to announce our investment in Benzinga,' said Steven Lau, managing director of WorldQuant Ventures. 'The world of finance needs a voice focused on delivering valuable insight to its clients as well as highly actionable data sets at incredible speed, and Benzinga's consistent ability to do exactly that presented a great investment opportunity for WorldQuant Ventures. Benzinga is already a top financial news site, particularly with active traders and millennials, and we believe it has tremendous growth potential within the investment world.'

Investment Size

Benzinga announced it closed a $3 million investment round. Other investors in the round include Dan Gilbert, Founding Partner of Detroit Venture Partners, Stuart Robbins, former Managing Director of Global Equities for DLJ, Joshua Levine, senior advisor at Kita Capital, and Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, founders of Lightbank, as well as other strategic investors.

'It's a testament to the talent of our team and the power of our mission to have such a strong group of investors believing in us,' said Benzinga CEO Jason Raznick. 'Working with strategic investors of this caliber reinforces Benzinga's potential to disrupt the way the markets consume information.'

Original Content

Benzinga's hands-on approach to financial news comes at a time when many media organizations are turning to automation to produce content. Benzinga's news desk breaks stories and manually curates company reports to sort through the noise. Access to Benzinga's data puts investors in the know, and the Benzinga Pro platform is an exclusive data intelligence experience that is becoming lost in the capital markets.

'Benzinga is focused on changing the way banks, quant hedge funds and individuals consume information,' said Raznick. 'Benzinga provides unique, actionable content to investors. WorldQuant Ventures will be a key partner as Benzinga continues to innovate, provide best-in-class data services, and throw our signature events.'

Events

Those events include the Benzinga Fintech Awards, the largest awards show and gala recognizing the top products, companies, and thought leaders in fintech.

Detroit Roots

Benzinga is committed to making Detroit a global hub of fintech, as Dan Gilbert alluded to earlier this year.

'People don't always think about it, but Detroit is a financial and technological powerhouse that can lead the way in everything from driverless cars to fintech,' says Raznick. 'The nation's second-largest retail home mortgage lender is based in downtown Detroit, and the city has a spirit of innovation that has changed the entire world many times over. We can do it again in the financial space.'

Growth Plans

Benzinga plans to use the funding to fuel aggressive growth. The company is looking to expand its Detroit and New York teams with passionate salespeople, data scientists, editorial staff and developers, and will continue to push to disrupt the capital markets media landscape. Those who are excited by the prospect of building a fast-growing, disruptive media company can check out jobs.benzinga.com.

About Benzinga

Benzinga is a leading originator of actionable financial insights for traders and investors. Benzinga's news desk is constantly breaking stories and moving billions of dollars of market capitalization through its real-time terminal and data feed product, Benzinga Pro. Benzinga's original content is syndicated to 70 partner websites, such as Yahoo! Finance and MSN. Benzinga is the leading provider of news to the North American brokerage community, with a client list including TD Ameritrade, Morningstar, TradeKing, and many more. The company is headquartered in downtown Detroit and dedicated to driving Detroit's renaissance. For more information, check out Benzinga.com, Cloud.Benzinga.com and Pro.Benzinga.com.

About WorldQuant Ventures LLC

WorldQuant Ventures LLC is an angel investment firm founded in 2014 as a private investment vehicle for WorldQuant, LLC's founder, Igor Tulchinsky. The firm is focused on disruptive companies in technology, with a particular focus on data and finance, and has investments in over 20 companies. WorldQuant Ventures LLC is a separate entity from WorldQuant, LLC, a global quantitative investment management firm. For more information, please visit www.worldquantventures.com and www.worldquant.com.