Market research startup YipitData Inc. on Monday announced that it has secured a late-stage funding round set to be worth as much as $475 million. The impressive funding round has led to considerable speculation about YipitData’s valuation, with industry insiders suggesting that it reflects the company’s strong market position and promising growth trajectory.

Carlyle Group Inc., a Nasdaq-listed investment firm, led the Series E funding round. 

New York-based YipitData provides a platform through which companies can access research about the markets in which they compete. The startup also provides data for financial services firms, which use it to inform their investment decisions. In all, YipitData says that its customer base includes more than 400 investment funds and corporations, including Uber Technologies Inc. and other big names from the tech industry.

YipitData clients use its market research for a variety of tasks. An investment firm can leverage YipitData’s platform to track the key business metrics of a company in which it’s considering to buy a stake, follow strategic initiatives being pursued by the management team and track notable events such as acquisitions. An online retailer, meanwhile, might use the startup’s data to identify shifts in consumer behavior.

One of the key use cases that YipitData targets with its platform is competitor tracking. Retailers can use the startup’s data to measure the market share of rivals, while an automaker could monitor how many vehicles other manufacturers are selling and through which dealerships.

According to YipitData, its platform can also help companies follow market trends that may require adapting their business strategy. An e-commerce company could analyze competitors’ sales strategies to identify which product categories are experiencing momentum and adjust its online catalog accordingly. Restaurant operators use YipitData for tasks such as tracking changes in customer preferences. 

“The amount of data generated grows exponentially every year, and can be valuable in providing accurate, detailed insights across all types of markets,” said YipitData co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Vinicius Vacant. “However, the data is raw, unstructured and constantly changing, making it very difficult for companies to use it in any meaningful way.”

That’s where YipitData comes in, he added. “We specialize in analyzing billions of data points every day to provide reliable insights to investment funds and corporations so they can make better decisions,” he said.

YipitData will use the proceeds from its newly announced funding round to invest in product development. The startup also said that it intends to expand into more markets. YipitData’s expansion plan may involve growing the number of sectors on which its platform provides information.

Startups with solutions that can enhance companies’ analytics initiatives have raised billions of dollars in funding over recent years. The perhaps most prominent example is Databricks Inc., which announced in August that it closed a hefty $1.6 billion funding round at a $38 billion valuation. Data integration specialist Matillion Ltd. raised $150 million in September, while Neo4j Inc., the maker of a popular graph database, secured a $325 million investment a few months earlier.

As YipitData’s funding round highlights, enterprises are investing not only in software tooling as part of their analytics initiatives but also in data. Other market players are addressing the trend as well. Google LLC’s cloud business in May debuted a cloud solution called Datashare that makes it easier for companies such as banks to source information from their financial data suppliers.

Data is also essential for artificial intelligence projects. Enterprise-grade neural networks can only be developed with the help of training datasets. A number of market players, including multiple venture-backed startups such as Snorkel AI Inc., offer tools that make it easier for enterprises to create AI training datasets.

YipitData didn’t disclose the valuation at which its newly announced funding round was raised. However, the startup did specify it has reached “unicorn” status, which suggests a valuation of more than $1 billion.

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