The LSE Directory / Fundamental data
Nasdaq Data Link is a cloud-based data marketplace operated by Nasdaq, Inc. that catalogues financial, economic and alternative datasets sourced from hundreds of third-party publishers, alongside free public data from central banks, governments and multinational organisations. Users query the catalogue through Nasdaq Data Link's Time-Series and Tables REST APIs or its streaming API, with official client support for Python, R, Excel and MATLAB and a SQL interface, and most premium datasets are sold individually on an a la carte subscription basis rather than through a single bundled platform fee. The platform's structural difference from a conventional market-data vendor is that it operates as a two-sided marketplace rather than an in-house research shop: independent publishers such as Sharadar (equity fundamentals, insider transactions and institutional holdings extracted from SEC filings), Zacks Investment Research (earnings estimates and analyst revisions), OptionWorks (options pricing models) and DataYes list datasets on the platform and are paid from subscription revenue, while Nasdaq provides distribution, billing and delivery infrastructure. This lets it carry narrower, more specialised alternative-data categories, such as shipping, insurance and executive travel patterns through its Corporate Aviation Intelligence product, than a single publisher could produce alone, and it targets quantitative analysts, hedge funds, investment banks and academic researchers rather than retail investors. The business began as Quandl, founded in Toronto in 2012 by Tammer Kamel and Abraham Thomas after the pair grew frustrated with primitive delivery systems for financial data. Quandl raised venture funding, reported at roughly 17 to 20 million dollars across Series A and B rounds, from investors including August Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and iGan Partners. Nasdaq, Inc. acquired Quandl in December 2018 to expand its alternative-data business; at the time of the deal Quandl reported use by eight of the top ten hedge funds and 14 of the top 15 largest banks, and by more than 30,000 active monthly users drawing on data from over 350 sources. Nasdaq relaunched the product under the Nasdaq Data Link name in 2021. Nasdaq's own current product materials describe the platform as covering more than 350 data sources and in use by over 800,000 finance professionals globally, a claimed user base well beyond the roughly 30,000 monthly active users Quandl reported at the time of its 2018 acquisition.
