The LSE Directory / Alternative data
Kpler is a commodity and maritime trade intelligence company that tracks the physical movement of energy, metals and agricultural commodities around the world in near real time. Its platform ingests AIS vessel tracking signals (the company cites more than one billion received daily), satellite imagery, customs records, port and terminal data, and government statistics, and fuses them with machine learning and analyst review into structured data on cargo flows, vessel positions, storage and inventories, and trade balances spanning more than 40 commodities. The company differentiates itself from generic ship tracking vendors by pairing fundamentals data, flows, storage, inventories, with decision tools built on top of it: chartering platforms, trading tools, sanctions and vessel compliance screening, and an AI assistant called Kpler Copilot. Since acquiring MarineTraffic and FleetMon in 2023 and Spire Maritime in 2025, it also operates its own terrestrial and satellite AIS receiver network rather than relying solely on third party feeds. Its customers are commodity traders, energy and shipping companies, banks and hedge funds, manufacturers, and government and defense agencies that need visibility into physical supply and demand ahead of official statistics; the company names Phillips 66, Tokyo Gas, Air Liquide, J.P. Morgan, BNP Paribas and Renault Group among its clients. Kpler was founded in Brussels in 2014 by François Cazor and Jean Maynier, who by the company's own account started out tracking LNG cargoes from a kitchen using AIS data before expanding, market by market, into LPG, crude, dry bulk, chemicals and other commodities through the late 2010s. The company says it has been profitable since inception and remains majority owned by its founders and staff; in April 2022 Five Arrows (Rothschild & Co's private equity arm) and Insight Partners took a minority stake valued at more than 200 million dollars. Kpler passed 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue in January 2024 and has grown through a sustained run of acquisitions, including ClipperData (2021), JBC Energy (2022), MarineTraffic and FleetMon (2023), Spire Maritime (announced November 2024, completed April 2025), Bridgeton Research Group (December 2025) and CITAC (May 2026). It reports more than 10,000 customer organisations and, per its own about page, more than 750 employees across 35-plus nationalities. Mark Cunningham, who joined the company in 2021, became CEO in September 2024 when Cazor and Maynier moved into Executive Chairman and President roles respectively. Its two most recent acquisitions extend Kpler beyond shipping and physical flow data into adjacent analytics. Bridgeton Research Group, bought in December 2025, adds proprietary models forecasting systematic trading behaviour across more than 200 markets, while CITAC, acquired in May 2026, brings over 25 years of downstream energy intelligence for Africa's refining and fuel trading sector, including CITAC's standing role as retained advisor to the African Refiners and Distributors Association.
