S&P Global acquired With Intelligence from Motive Partners for $1.8 billion in cash, announced Tuesday morning. The deal closes in mid-2025 pending regulatory clearance. With Intelligence operates data platforms serving 2,000 institutional investors across alternatives—LP relationship management, fundraising intel, performance benchmarking. The unit generated roughly $130 million in revenue last twelve months, implying a 13.8x revenue multiple at closing.
Motive Partners acquired With Intelligence in a 2022 roll-up of six specialist brands—FINalternatives, Hedgeweek, Private Equity Wire, and three European publications. The private equity firm consolidated fragmented LP workflow tools into a single API-fed platform. S&P Global now inherits 12,000 fund profiles, 40,000 manager records, and daily updates on capital deployment across venture, buyout, real estate, and infrastructure strategies. The acquisition plugs a gap: S&P dominates public credit ratings but lacked native coverage of the $13 trillion private markets complex where allocators hunt for alpha outside listed securities.
This matters because LP desks pay six figures annually for datasets that collapse diligence timelines. Preqin, PitchBook, and Burgiss command the incumbent footprint. S&P Global enters late but leverages distribution—its Market Intelligence terminal reaches 5,300 buy-side firms globally. Cross-selling With Intelligence data into that base at 30% attach rate would double the unit's revenue in eighteen months. The ratings franchise also supplies credit opinions on 1.2 million entities; mapping those to private fund exposures creates a underwriting edge competitors cannot replicate without acquiring a ratings agency. Family offices and endowments allocating 25%-40% to alternatives need consolidated views of manager track records, fee structures, and liquidity terms. S&P Global now sells them a single subscription instead of forcing three vendor relationships.
Watch for pricing changes when S&P Global integrates With Intelligence into its Market Intelligence SKU, likely Q3 2025. Competitor response from Preqin—owned by BlackRock since 2024—will signal whether private markets data becomes a margin war or stays a high-touch consultancy business. Monitor whether S&P Global's credit committee begins publishing private fund ratings using With Intelligence portfolio data; that product does not exist yet but the regulatory approval to rate funds already sits on S&P's balance sheet.
The timing is clean. Private credit funds raised $230 billion in 2024, up 18% year-over-year. Allocators need faster comps. S&P Global just bought the fastest delivery mechanism.