Databento

About Databento

Databento is a market data platform that provides real-time and historical financial data through modern, developer-friendly APIs. Founded in 2019 by Christina Qi — a former high-frequency trader who started her first hedge fund from her MIT dorm room with just $1,000, eventually trading up to $7.1 billion per day — the company set out to fix a long-standing problem in finance: market data is expensive, difficult to access, and locked behind legacy infrastructure.

Databento's approach is fundamentally different. Instead of requiring expensive enterprise contracts and months of onboarding, their self-service platform lets you instantly access institutional-grade data from over 60 trading venues worldwide, paying only for what you use. The name captures the philosophy perfectly: "Instead of buying the whole grocery store, you can just buy a bento box for dinner."

Company at a Glance

• Founded: 2019
• CEO & Co-Founder: Christina Qi (MIT alumna, 2025 UBS Female Founder Award recipient)
• Valuation: ~$110M
• Total Funding: $37.5M+ (Redpoint Ventures, Belvedere Trading, Clear Street)
• Team: Distributed across 8 time zones — alumni of Two Sigma, Flow Traders, Tower Research Capital, Google, and Stripe
• Recognition: World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer (2022), Inc. Magazine Best Workplace (2023)

Products & Data Coverage

Databento provides access to tick-level market data across equities, options, and futures — all through a single API integration. Their coverage includes:

• All 15 US equities exchanges
• All US equity options exchanges (via OPRA)
• All CME Group futures and options (CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX)
• ICE, Eurex, and 30+ alternative trading systems

Data types include full order book depth (MBO), top-of-book quotes, OHLCV bars, trade data, imbalance data, and reference data. Client libraries are available for Python, Rust, and C++, with real-time data gateways achieving a median latency of just 6.1 microseconds.

Notable Clients

Databento's client roster spans hedge funds, prop trading firms, and major technology companies — including Morgan Stanley, Google, OpenAI, Snowflake, Belvedere Trading, and QuantConnect. The University of Chicago and UC Berkeley also feature as institutional users.

University & Student Programs

Databento actively supports academic institutions and student trading organizations worldwide:

• UC Berkeley MFE: Official data partner for their top-ranked Master of Financial Engineering program — coursework, research, and capstone projects
• University of Calgary (Haskayne): Data sponsorship for FNCE 449/668; students receive $25 credits for hands-on work with NASDAQ trade/quote data
• Pepperdine Graziadio: Free data for student research projects and trading clubs
• Free credits: Every new account receives $125 in free API credits, applicable toward historical data from any supported venue

The platform's team management features allow club administrators to provision data access on a per-project basis with monthly spend limits — making it practical for student organizations to manage budgets while giving members real experience with professional market data infrastructure.

What This Means for Traders@SMU

For a university trading club, the barrier to accessing real market data has traditionally been prohibitive — institutional data feeds can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year. Databento eliminates that barrier entirely.

Members of Traders@SMU can:

• Access nanosecond-resolution trade and quote data from NASDAQ, NYSE, CME, and more
• Build and backtest strategies using the same data used by professional quant firms
• Work with Python APIs that integrate directly into research workflows and Jupyter notebooks
• Gain hands-on experience with institutional-quality data and modern data engineering practices

This kind of direct exposure to real market data is exactly what prepares students for careers in quantitative finance, algorithmic trading, and financial technology — and it's the reason we're proud to have Databento as a partner.