Congratulations to the owners of With Intelligence for realizing top value.
True to the maxim “Data is not Information, and Information is not Knowledge,” the premium here prices the knowledge layer, relationship intelligence that is hard to build, harder to buy, and almost impossible to replicate quickly.
Why pay ~14× revenue?
S&P Global’s US$1.8 billion price for a business guiding to roughly US$130 million of 2025 revenue looks steep, until you consider what is actually being acquired: scarce, curated relationship data and a direct pathway into private-markets workflow.
With Intelligence (W&I) brings proprietary visibility into an opaque ecosystem: ~30,000 investors, ~30,000 managers, ~70,000 funds, and ~350,000 deals across private equity, private credit, hedge funds, infrastructure, and family offices. This is not public-filings exhaust; it is relationship capital assembled over decades from LPs, GPs, administrators, and allocators.
The premium is therefore not for near-term earnings. It is for acceleration, buying years of time in a domain expected to approach US$40 trillion by decade’s end. Building an equivalent network organically would likely entail long delays, partner churn, and credibility hurdles. S&P has elected to compress that timeline.
What S&P is really buying
A network graph of alternatives. W&I maps who allocates to whom, how funds are structured, and where capital flows—actionable context for origination, diligence, monitoring, and benchmarking.
A workflow bridge. Plugging W&I into Capital IQ Pro, iLEVEL, Valuations, and WSO allows S&P to connect front-, middle-, and back-office tasks in private markets. Done well, that turns S&P from a provider of ratings and datasets into a command center for fund managers, allocators, and service providers.
A standards foothold. Private markets are converging toward more transparent, comparable reporting. The player that defines taxonomy and wiring – entities, relationships, performance, exposures – can shape how the market measures itself.
That is the strategic rationale behind the multiple: paying up to own the pipes and the map as the asset class institutionalizes.
How this meets Moody’s on the field, without copying it
Moody’s retains a formidable advantage in “entity truth”: curated private-company data (Orbis), beneficial ownership, KYC hierarchies, and regulatory-grade analytics, now increasingly delivered through AI agents and embedded workflows. That stack underpins credit discipline and compliance.
S&P’s move targets a different but complementary layer: the relationship and performance graph of private assets, who works with whom, where money moves, and how funds actually perform, integrated into tools that practitioners already use. In simple terms: Moody’s governs identities and risk; S&P is buying the connective tissue of relationships and results. Together, those layers define the next phase of transparency.
Integration is the make-or-break
The risks are practical and immediate: harmonizing data taxonomies, preventing client overlap from creating confusion, preserving W&I’s sourcing engine, and weaving the assets into S&P’s platforms without losing speed. The financial bar is clear: slightly dilutive to GAAP EPS at first, with accretion to adjusted EPS targeted by 2027. The strategic bar is higher: win adoption across front/middle/back office so the network effects actually show up in renewal rates, ACV growth, and product attach.
The strategic equation, stated plainly
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S&P’s wager: proprietary relationship intelligence + integrated workflow = faster standard-setting power in private markets.
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Moody’s strength: regulator-grade entity resolution, KYC lineage, and credit analytics—now scaled through AI delivery.
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Where they collide: the US$2T private-credit segment, where investors, after costly missteps, are demanding ratings-like transparency, machine-readable governance, and early-warning surveillance [also read: Private Credit’s Reckoning].
Viewed that way, the ~14× revenue multiple looks less like excess and more like the price of showing up early, before the taxonomy hardens and switching costs go up.
If you ask me
AI may be the new engine of productivity, but credit discipline remains the grammar of finance. S&P is buying a map [relationships one can act on]; Moody’s already holds the ledger [identity, ownership hierarchies, KYC/AML linkages, ratings history, model inputs, – data which is regulator-grade and auditable]. Between them lies the contested ground of private-credit normalization. The winner won’t be the firm with the most data, but the firm whose data becomes inseparable from how regulators, auditors, and institutions supervise risk.
That is the real prize behind the price.
Source: S&P Global Press Release, Intrepid Explorers, LLC research
About this Article: At Intrepid Explorers, LLC, we hold fast to the belief that “Data is not Information, and Information is not Knowledge.” In today’s algorithmic age, truth and understanding still demand human insight. We live in a world awash with data yet starving for meaning. Our mission is to bridge that divide — transforming noise into signal, and information into the kind of knowledge that drives foresight, trust, and sound judgment. We don’t chase trends; we help to interpret them. We rely on AI-backed research to distill complexity into clarity — almost just in time — while balancing every digital advance with decades of industry experience. Because at the end of the day, technology amplifies capability, but it is the human factor that provides wisdom, context, and integrity.
We welcome critique and commentary on our work — not as validation, but as collaboration — in the shared pursuit of insight and value for our industry. We can be reached at joachimcbartels@gmail.com