Exegy, the low-latency market data, trading, and execution technology provider, has agreed to acquire NovaSparks Inc., the specialist in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) enabled market data and trading products.
Exegy’s move to bring NovaSparks into the group signals a clear intent to exert deeper control over the FPGA-driven market data pipeline, from normalisation and distribution through to client deployment models.
Speaking to TradingTech Insight, Exegy CEO David Taylor frames the deal as a continuation rather than a pivot. “One thing we have always been clear about regarding our approach to mergers and acquisitions is that an acquisition must be an accelerator to an established strategy, not a change of strategy,” he says.Although at a product level, NovaSparks’ FPGA cards and appliances overlap directly with parts of Exegy’s existing portfolio, that overlap is not seen as redundancy. Instead, Taylor describes it as a route to faster expansion across markets and client segments that Exegy was already targeting.
“The NovaSparks product line is focused on market data applications of FPGAs, which does have a direct overlap with the Exegy product line, specifically the FPGA cards and appliances in our portfolio,” he says. “However, the strategic value here is that we are broadening our client community and market coverage. There are new clients and markets that come to us with NovaSparks, and it is attractive for us to reach those markets faster with established clients.”
This framing suggests that rather than positioning NovaSparks as a bolt-on capability, the acquisition strengthens Exegy’s ability to serve latency-sensitive clients across a wider set of venues, asset classes, and deployment preferences, without fragmenting its roadmap.
One of the most immediate impacts of the deal is on packaging and service models. NovaSparks’ appliances have historically been deployed as highly specialised, performance-critical components. Exegy could now wrap those products in the same managed services framework that has become central to its own value proposition. “We have a well-established managed appliance product in the marketplace, and clients are very fond of the managed service we place around our offering,” Taylor says. “We believe that this represents an elevation of value for the NovaSparks client base.”
This emphasis reflects a broader industry shift around the FPGA-based market data infrastructure that has become critical to latency-sensitive trading firms. Exegy’s strategy positions managed services not as an add-on, but as a way to industrialise ultra-low latency infrastructure without compromising performance.
Taylor is careful to avoid any suggestion of forced migration, stressing that these systems sit at the core of clients’ trading infrastructure and must evolve without disruption. “The ‘beacon on the hill’ for us is to have one best-of-breed FPGA appliance product that is managed and delivers a high degree of value to clients,” he says. “We are going to achieve that goal by providing seamless migration paths. These are mission-critical systems, and a significant amount of work has been put into integrating them into clients’ trading stacks. By no means are we going to disrupt that.”
Crucially, that convergence is framed as a ‘best of both worlds’ approach rather than a lift-and-shift exercise. Existing NovaSparks deployments will continue to be supported, while Exegy will selectively deploy code and intellectual property across its FPGA portfolio, including assets gained through its earlier acquisition of Enyx. Taken together, the acquisition reinforces Exegy’s competitive positioning as a platform provider rather than a collection of high-performance components.
“Hopefully, it is clear to everyone in the marketplace that you either decide to try and build this yourself, or you work with us,” he says, adding that Exegy has quantified the cost, time, and technical risk of firms attempting to replicate this capability in-house, and has seen multiple clients ultimately choose to partner instead.
For trading firms, the choice is increasingly between building and maintaining complex FPGA stacks internally, or partnering with vendors that have already industrialised that capability. With NovaSparks now part of the group, Exegy is making a strong case that it intends to define that platform layer for the next phase of ultra-low latency trading.
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