FiscalNote Inc. is making yet another acquisition — this time, Seoul data firm Aicel Technologies, the company said Wednesday.
By the Washington Business Journal’s count, this is FiscalNote’s 11th acquisition in 2021. The D.C. company, which provides a dashboard for legal and regulatory data, is planning to go public in the first quarter of 2022 via a merger with a blank-check company. The deal with Aicel Technologies is expected to close in that same quarter. As with the prior buys, the company declined to share terms of the deal.
Aicel Technologies, founded in 2016 by CEO Min Kim, serves fintechs and other companies through a subscription model that gives customers access to data on everything from exports and patent filings to the vacation rental and food delivery markets. It already lists FiscalNote as one of its platform partners on its website. Aicel's other partners and investors include data visualization and dashboard company Datahero Inc., Seoul National University, and European firm and alternative data aggregator Eagle Alpha.
Aicel has doubled its revenue in the past year, according to Wednesday’s release. Kim will continue to lead the Aicel division of FiscalNote after the deal closes.
"We look forward to collaborating with Aicel's team to further penetrate the alternative data and fintech industries, while continuing to develop capabilities to serve the regulated sectors of the future, such as ride sharing, the gig economy, e-commerce, food delivery, and more,” FiscalNote co-founder and CEO Tim Hwang said in the release.
FiscalNote owns CQ Roll Call, which it acquired in 2018. So far this year, Hwang’s firm acquired ten companies — including, most recently, fellow D.C. firm Frontier Strategy Group LLC, a market intelligence and advisory shop. Terms of that deal also weren’t disclosed, but the company said the price was “at multiples in line with previous transactions of similar scale."
Once it merges with special-purpose acquisition company Duddell Street Acquisition Corp. (NADAQ: DSAC) FiscalNote will trade on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “NOTE.” That deal values FiscalNote at $1.3 billion, and the company expects to become profitable in 2023, according to an investor presentation.
