The View from the Office. 

I met up with Sebastean Leoni, co-founder and CEO of Kamba Group, which helps hedge funds and other financial firms access alternative data. 

We met for lunch at Piccola Cucina, on the Upper East Side. Sebastean ordered the tuna tartare. I had the cacio e pepe. The place was packed with a business lunch crowd. 

Sebastean said the explosion of alternative data has created both opportunity and challenges. 

Despite abundant resources, even large firms still struggle to find, validate, and onboard data efficiently. It’s a process that can take months.

Kamba doesn’t sell data; their AI agentic system combines internal and external data, analytics, human judgment and AI to help clients search, test and operationalize data fast and securely. 

I know firsthand from projects I worked on at Bloomberg how often datasets are corrupted by errors.

Sebastean said the platform can reduce a nine-month process to minutes, letting analysts focus on strategy rather than operational data work. 

The company operates on a subscription model and is expanding into private credit.

You can connect with Sebastean via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro