Xignite, a San Mateo, CA-based provider of on-demand financial market data, today announced a couple of new customers that are working on interesting things, including micro-blogging information service StockTwits and iPhone app developer Turing Studios.
Customer wins are one thing, but Xignite has a pretty interesting model, has attracted millions in venture capital funding, boasts an impressive customer roster and still manages to largely fly under the radar. So this gives us a perfect excuse to take a closer look.
Essentially, Xignite delivers a wide range of financial web services via the cloud, enabling browser and desktop application developers as well as online publishers to tap into a stream of critical market data on-demand in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. The data that can be pulled into applications ranges from market quotes, news, corporate data, industry information and analytics to detailed statistics.
Here’s what we wrote when Xignite and Forbes.com jointly announced how the latter was integrating the company’s data streams:
Google, CNBC, and WSJ pay the NASDAQ a sizable chunk of money for a single cumbersome stream of data. Now, Forbes.com joins the handful of consumer portals offering real-time data–with minimal development costs to integrate the raw NASDAQ or BATS data.
Rapid iteration is a major benefit of cloud-based systems, though forcing further reliance on your partner. Forbes.com simply embeds a widget on any page that needs stock quotes. The Achilles heel is that Forbes must now depend on Xignite for any widget changes. For a large company, this may not always be an easy decision. But for smaller companies, this gives them access to services previously reserved for the big boys.
Xignite is today announcing that it has signed up StockTwits, a community-powered micro-blogging information service that allows users to track information about public company stock performances.
Another new customer is Turing Studios, an iPhone application developer that is about to debut a realtime version of its PortfolioLive app, which tracks stock prices, values, options and futures. Last but not least, the company has won business from Palantir Technologies, a developer of an enterprise analytics platform called Palantir Finance that enables banks and hedge funds to integrate and analyze data sources.
As more and more data moves to the stream, Xignite is positioned well to turn itself in an essential building block for many financial Web and desktop application providers and online publishers. And it’s a great case study for the cloud, too.
Privately-held Xignite has to date raised a mere $5.5 million from Altos Ventures and Startup Capital Ventures, although a host of large companies and financial institutions are on their customer reference list, including Citi, GE Commercial Finance, Wells Fargo, ING, Marsh & McLennan, NetSuite, Starbucks, and Wendy’s.
Comment