A service that claims to give hedge funds and other investors an edge by using satellites and artificial intelligence to spy on the operations of companies officially went on sale this week.
Kayrros, a Paris-based business specialising in interpreting satellite images, has launched an Equity Tracker service that it says will help investors to outperform stock markets by providing unpublished data on listed companies long before it becomes publicly available.
It said its new service would monitor activity at oil and gas developments, cement plants, solar farms, steelworks and airports to provide insights to investors.
Hedge funds and mainstream fund managers have always tried to ferret out unpublished data to gain an edge, a practice that goes back to the days when fund management trainees