MSCI Acquires VantagerHow for PE Tools
Financial data giant MSCI has acquired VantagerHow, a move aimed at enhancing its suite of AI-driven quantitative tools for private markets. The deal will expand MSCI's capabilities in PE valuation, due diligence, and deal screening for its institutional clients.
VantagerHow, founded in 2024 and based in New York, is an AI-native platform designed to streamline the pre-investment due diligence process for institutional investors in private markets. The company's solution automates the extraction and analysis of unstructured documents from General Partners' (GPs) data rooms, generating AI-powered reports to support faster and more consistent decision-making. The acquisition is a strategic move by MSCI to enhance its end-to-end private markets services, from pre-investment diligence to post-trade analytics. Luke Flemmer, MSCI's Head of Private Assets, highlighted that due diligence is one of the most time-consuming stages in private market investing, and VantagerHow's AI capabilities will help automate this critical step. VantagerHow's co-founder and CEO, Mason Lender, a data science graduate from Yale with prior experience at McKinsey & Company and Google, stated that the integration with MSCI will accelerate their vision of bringing speed, structure, and scale to private markets diligence. Before its public launch, VantagerHow had already amassed a client base managing over $100 billion in assets. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, MSCI has indicated that the transaction's financial impact is not expected to be material. VantagerHow's financial results will be reported under MSCI's "All Other – Private Assets" segment. This acquisition is part of a broader strategy by MSCI to expand its footprint in the private markets. This includes the launch of new data and analytics solutions like Private Asset and Deal Metrics, which is built on data from over 26,000 private equity buyout deals. MSCI has been actively working to increase transparency in private markets, having recently launched the MSCI All Country Public + Private Equity Index and new indexes to measure the performance of venture-backed private companies. The firm's goal is to provide a comprehensive toolkit for investors to better understand and integrate private assets into their portfolios.
