Vortexa

About Vortexa

Vortexa is a London-headquartered real-time energy and freight data analytics company that tracks waterborne energy trades worldwide. Founded in 2016 by chief executive Fabio Kuhn and chairman Etienne Amic, it provides real-time data and analytics for energy and freight markets, combining human intelligence with AI-driven insights to give traders, analysts and freight professionals transparency in what it describes as one of the most opaque markets in existence. Its clients include oil supermajors, commodities trading houses, investment banks, brokers and shipowners across the globe. It publishes from vortexa.com.

Founding in 2016

Vortexa was founded in 2016 by CEO Fabio Kuhn, the former head of trading technology and analytics at BP, and Etienne Amic as chairman. Kuhn's background at one of the world's great energy traders gave the start-up an insider's understanding of the problem it set out to solve: with trillions of dollars of energy trade taking place on water every year, the physical energy market remained fragmented and incomplete in its data, forcing businesses to make high-stakes decisions in the dark.

The company's mission, as it describes it, is to open, connect and optimise the energy world through pioneering technology and unmatched market information — to shine light on the physical flows of energy so that traders, analysts and charterers can identify opportunities to move energy more economically and efficiently.

What Vortexa does

Vortexa's team of engineers, data scientists and market analysts has created a system of data and analytics tools to view global flows of oil and gas, delivered in real time. Its web-based app and programmatic API and SDK interfaces help traders, analysts and charterers make high-value trading decisions with confidence.

The company offers accurate and comprehensive global data on crude oil, refined products, LPG and LNG across all vessel classes, claiming real-time and in-depth insights into 99 per cent of global waterborne oil and gas movements. By providing detailed insights into global flows, freight and inventories, the platform gives users a clearer view of supply chains and trends in complex energy markets.

Energy flows analytics

The core product is energy flows analytics: real-time tracking of the world's waterborne crude oil, refined products, LPG and LNG cargoes. Features include flows analytics, cargo intelligence, visualisation of global oil and gas flows, and tracking of vessel diversions and floating storage — the tankers that become storage when markets are oversupplied.

In markets where a single cargo diversion can move regional prices, knowing where every vessel is, what it carries and where it is heading is a decisive informational edge. Vortexa's combination of satellite AIS tracking, human market intelligence and machine-learning models aims to answer those questions in real time.

Freight analytics

Alongside energy flows, Vortexa offers freight analytics: current and forward-looking market analytics on freight supply and demand dynamics. The product provides real-time insights into supply and demand, fleet distribution, vessel availability, fixtures and time charters, plus predictive freight pricing and market outlook.

Freight is the connective tissue of the physical energy market — the cost of moving a cargo often determines whether a trade is profitable — and dedicated freight analytics allows charterers, traders and shipowners to navigate the tanker market with the same data-driven confidence as the cargo markets.

Onshore crude inventories

Vortexa's onshore crude inventories product provides granular, tank-level data on global crude oil storage levels, covering more than 22,500 storage tanks holding 6.8 billion barrels across more than 120 countries, with real-time, two-weekly updates and detail down to terminal level.

Inventory data is among the most market-sensitive information in oil: the balance between supply and demand, visible in stock levels, drives price formation. Tank-level granularity gives traders and analysts a view of storage dynamics that was previously available only to those with physical assets on the ground.

Growth and funding

Vortexa's growth has been fuelled by successive funding rounds. After a $5 million Series A in 2019, the company saw exponential growth: in 2020 revenues tripled as it opened offices in Singapore and the United States and doubled its organisation to more than 70 people. A €15.8 million Series B took total funding past $30 million, and a $34 million Series C led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital — with existing investors Notion Capital, Monashees, FJ Labs and Communitas Capital, plus Metaplanet, the investment firm of Skype founder Jaan Tallinn — accelerated international expansion.

Debt financing followed the equity rounds: €23 million from CIBC Innovation Banking, whose UK and Europe managing director described Vortexa as representing the forefront of energy and freight data analytics, and a further $25 million from CIBC. In total the company has raised more than $60 million since inception, funding its vision of transforming the energy world.

The team and global hubs

Vortexa is a multidisciplinary team of more than 160 people combining energy and freight expertise, data science and engineering, led by founder and CEO Fabio Kuhn with executives including chief technology officer Maksym Schipka, chief revenue officer Christopher Nathan and chief financial officer Paul Harris. The company operates from major hubs in London, Geneva, Singapore, Houston, New York City and the UAE.

The geographic spread mirrors the markets it covers: London and Geneva for European trading, Singapore for Asia, Houston and New York for the Americas, and the UAE for the Middle East — the nodes of the global waterborne energy trade.

Vortexa today

Today Vortexa provides real-time data and analytics for energy and freight markets to oil supermajors, commodities trading houses, investment banks, brokers and shipowners spanning the globe, tracking the movement of crude oil, refined products, LPG and LNG across all vessel classes and monitoring billions of barrels of onshore storage.

In a decade, the 2016 start-up has become part of the market infrastructure of physical energy trading: the data layer that helps the industry navigate opaque markets, move energy more efficiently and — in the company's telling — support market efficiency and sustainability in the world's most important commodity trade.

Methodology: human intelligence plus AI

Vortexa's distinctive claim is methodological: it offers accurate and comprehensive global data by combining human intelligence with AI-driven insights. The company's team of engineers, data scientists and market analysts has built a system that fuses satellite vessel tracking, proprietary data sources and machine-learning models with the judgment of energy and freight market specialists — an approach designed for a market where data is fragmented and incomplete and businesses have historically made high-stakes decisions in the dark.

The scale of the prize explains the investment: Vortexa has cited figures of $1.8 trillion and more than $3 trillion of energy trade taking place on water every year, describing the physical energy market as still one of the most opaque markets in existence. Its mission — to open, connect and optimise the energy world through pioneering technology and unmatched market information — frames transparency itself as the product. The company's exponential growth after its 2019 Series A, with revenues tripling in 2020, suggests the market agreed that the problem was worth solving.

Offices and people

Vortexa's team of more than 160 people combines energy and freight market expertise with data science and engineering, led by founder and chief executive Fabio Kuhn alongside chief technology officer Maksym Schipka, chief revenue officer Christopher Nathan and chief financial officer Paul Harris. The company operates from major hubs in London, Geneva, Singapore, Houston, New York City and the UAE — the trading centres through which the world's waterborne energy flows are financed, fixed and managed. The geographic spread gives Vortexa's analysts proximity to the markets they model: the crude and products desks of London and Geneva, the Asian trading hub of Singapore, the US Gulf's energy complex at Houston, and the Middle East producers served from the UAE.