Eagle Alpha gets $1.2m in fundraising

Eagle Alpha, a Dublin-headquartered start-up that analyses social media for stockbrokers, hedge funds and other investors, has raised $1.2 million (€942,000) in its second fundraising round.

The company led by former investment banker Emmett Kilduff has raised $2.7 million in 2014, taking the total it has raised to $3.5 million to date. It recently asked Evan Weaver, Twitter's former technical architect, to join its advisory board. Mr Weaver is credited with scaling the social network from 2008 until 2011 to allow it handle millions of users at once without crashing.

“We’re seeing a change in the market as it wakes up to the value of the web, and we’re reacting to this by building out our capabilities,” said Mr Kilduff.

“This funding round enables us to focus on execution in the near term that will hold us in good stead for a large Series A funding round early next year.”

Mr Kilduff declined to say how much he hoped to raise but acknowledged it “could be” more than $10 million.

Eagle Alpha uses its expertise to identify, distil and aggregate large amounts of data generated by social networks to produce reports which investors can use when making decisions.

Its investors and advisory panel includes experienced individuals from Barclays Capital, CQS, Deutsche Bank, Schroders and Twitter.

Roberto Hoornweg, one of Eagle Alpha's new investors and former co-head of global fixed income at UBS, said: "Capturing relevant and actionable information in a timely manner from the web has become impossible without intelligent technology. Eagle Alpha's web watch offers an innovative solution that adds value to clients with a simple and scalable business model."

Eagle Alpha has 40 clients made up of stockbrokers, bankers, advisors and corporates in Connecticut, New York and London. Mr Kilduff's father, Tony, a director of Eagle Alpha, is a veteran technology investor who previously sold banking software business Kindle.