9fin

About 9fin

Debt capital markets are among the largest in the world — valued at around $145 trillion — yet for decades the technology serving them lagged far behind. Information lived in emails, PDFs and private data rooms, and analysts spent their days on manual data entry. 9fin was founded in London in 2016 to change that: an AI-native platform combining data, news and predictive analytics for debt capital markets professionals. A decade later it has become the UK's newest fintech unicorn, valued at $1.3 billion, serving more than 300 leading banks, asset managers, law firms and advisory firms across the globe.

Founding by Two University Friends

9fin was founded in 2016 by Steven Hunter and Huss El-Sheikh, university friends who had gone on to careers on opposite sides of the banking-technology divide. Hunter was a former J.P. Morgan banker who had experienced at first hand the pain of working with fragmented, poor-quality information in the debt markets; El-Sheikh was a Deutsche Bank engineer with the technical expertise to do something about it. Together they set out to build the platform they wished had existed when they worked in the industry: faster, smarter intelligence for the debt capital markets community.

The founding insight was that debt markets suffered not from a lack of information but from its fragmentation. Finding something as basic as earnings data, price-sensitive news flow or key offering documents was, in Hunter's account, "incredibly painful". The documents existed; they were simply scattered across inboxes, data rooms and filing systems, in formats that resisted analysis. 9fin's answer was to centralise that information and apply machine learning to extract and standardise it in real time.

The Problem It Solves

Debt capital markets, 9fin argues, are the largest asset class in the world, yet the technology supporting them still lags decades behind — largely unchanged, in the founders' telling, since the 1980s. As loan, bond and private credit markets have converged, the need for better information, delivered faster, has only grown. AI can help, but only when trained on reliable data, much of which remains trapped in data rooms, emails and PDFs.

9fin centralises this information and uses it to fuel AI technology embedded in professional workflows. Its platform allows credit professionals to source deals, assess risk and monitor market movements without switching between tools — identifying opportunities, staying ahead of competitors and cutting down the hours of manual research that traditionally defined the sector. The pitch to clients is straightforward: win mandates, analyse risk and monitor global debt markets from a single platform.

Early Funding and Expansion

The company's early funding rounds chart its steady ascent. In October 2021, 9fin raised an £8 million Series A round led by Redalpine, the European early-stage investor, which supported its initial expansion into the US market. By then the company had already quadrupled its client base and tripled its team in the space of a year, partnered with the European Leveraged Finance Association on legal data and analytics, and counted nine of the top ten investment banks in Europe among its clients.

In December 2022 came a $23 million Series A+ round led by Spark Capital, with the firm's general partner Alex Finkelstein joining the board. The capital funded continued product development and the deepening of the company's US presence. The product suite at this stage already spanned news alerts, financials, covenants, comparables, deal predictions, ESG data and search — a comprehensive toolkit for fixed-income professionals.

Series B and the AI Push

In December 2024, 9fin secured a $50 million Series B investment led by Highland Europe, with Highland Europe partner Fergal Mullen joining the board. The company said the capital would be used to further develop its artificial intelligence capabilities and to scale its presence in the US market. By late 2024 the firm employed approximately 250 people, and it had delivered multiple consecutive years of 100 per cent annual recurring revenue growth with industry-leading retention.

The Series B reflected a broader recognition: that the application of AI to financial data was becoming the defining competitive battleground in market information, and that 9fin's combination of proprietary datasets and AI-native workflows positioned it strongly. As Hunter would later put it, "AI will redefine the credit markets, but only if it's powered by proprietary data and embedded into how professionals actually work."

The Bond Radar Acquisition

In March 2025, 9fin acquired Bond Radar, the primary issuance data provider, in a move that significantly deepened its coverage of new bond deals. The acquisition gave 9fin issuance history stretching back to 2003 and strengthened its position in primary market intelligence — the new-issue calendar being one of the most commercially valuable datasets in debt capital markets, driving mandate decisions at banks and allocation decisions at investors.

The deal illustrated 9fin's strategy of building its proprietary data assets through a combination of organic collection, machine-learning extraction and targeted acquisition. Each dataset added to the platform increased the value of the whole: issuance data enriched the predictive models, which improved the news and analytics products, which attracted more clients, whose usage generated more signal.

Becoming a Unicorn

In March 2026, 9fin closed a $170 million Series C funding round led by HarbourVest, with participation from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and existing backers Redalpine, Highland Europe, Spark Capital and Seedcamp. The round valued the company at $1.3 billion, making 9fin the UK's latest fintech unicorn, and brought total capital raised to more than $250 million.

The company said the new capital would strengthen its technology, expand its proprietary datasets and accelerate growth in the United States, supporting hiring across AI, engineering and data teams in the UK and Ireland. More than 300 leading banks, asset managers, law firms and advisory firms now rely on 9fin as their core platform — among them names such as KKR, Apollo, BNP Paribas and Kirkland & Ellis. CPP Investments, notably, was already a 9fin client before joining the round as an investor — a vote of confidence from the buy side that carried particular weight.

Global Expansion: The APAC Launch

On 23 April 2026, 9fin formally launched its Asia-Pacific operations, targeting banks, asset managers, advisory firms and law firms across the region with a unified platform covering bonds, loans and private credit. The launch established an initial base in Hong Kong, with teams also being built in Singapore and India, and was backed by the Series C capital.

The APAC platform covers more than 1,800 issuers and 16,000 instruments, with issuance history dating to 2003 following the Bond Radar acquisition. The launch followed prior expansions across the United States, Europe and Latin America; the company has indicated that the CEEMEA markets are next. The geographic expansion reflects the globalisation of private credit and leveraged finance: the workflows 9fin digitised in London and New York are now being demanded in every major financial centre.

The Product Suite

9fin's platform combines several layers of functionality. At its foundation is data: standardised, searchable information on bonds, loans and private credit instruments, extracted by machine learning from offering documents, filings and disclosures. Above that sits news and analytics: news alerts, financial analysis, covenant summaries, comparables and deal predictions, plus ESG data. And above that sit the AI-powered workflows that distinguish the platform — tools that let credit professionals query, screen and monitor the market in natural, efficient ways.

Recent product development has pushed into specialist areas. In 2026 the company launched a comprehensive BDC Watchlist, identifying billions of dollars of loans held by business development companies as "at risk", alongside a BDC Valuations tool that lets users see how any single credit is marked across every BDC that holds it. Such products show the platform moving from general market coverage into the granular, instrument-level analytics that drive investment decisions.

Market Position and Clientele

9fin's client base spans the debt capital markets ecosystem: investment banks that use it to source mandates and benchmark performance, asset managers and hedge funds that use it to find opportunities and manage risk, and law firms and advisory firms that use it to track deals and documentation. The company's claim that nine of the top ten investment banks in Europe were already clients by 2021 testifies to how quickly it became embedded in the industry's workflow.

The company competes in a market long dominated by Bloomberg, LSEG (formerly Refinitiv) and the specialist intelligence services such as Debtwire and LevFin Insights. Its differentiation is its AI-native architecture and its singular focus on debt: where the incumbents built terminals for all asset classes, 9fin built a platform for one, and optimised every workflow for the credit professional.

Leadership and Culture

Steven Hunter serves as chief executive, with co-founder Huss El-Sheikh as chief technology officer — a division of labour that mirrors the company's founding DNA of banking domain expertise fused with engineering. The board has been built out through successive funding rounds, with partners from Redalpine, Spark Capital and Highland Europe joining at various stages. The company's growth from a two-founder startup to a 250-plus-person organisation, with offices in London, New York, Hong Kong and Belfast and teams across Latin America and Asia, has been achieved while maintaining the product-led culture of its early years.

Official Website

9fin's official website is 9fin.com, where prospective clients can explore the platform's coverage of global debt markets and request demonstrations. The company remains headquartered in London, where it was founded in 2016, as it pursues its ambition to modernise the world's largest asset class.