Managing Director
Technology
Joseph Watson is a Managing Director at Solomon Partners in Technology, focusing on Data, Analytics and Information Services. He joined the firm in 2023.
Joe has nearly a decade of experience advising private, public, and private-equity clients on mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations, private capital raises, and other financial advisory assignments.
Before joining Solomon Partners, Joe worked at Houlihan Lokey where he led the creation and expansion of the North American Data & Analytics group. Prior to Houlihan, Joe worked in M&A advisory at Quayle Munro in London. Over the course of his career, Joe has advised on over 50 corporate finance transactions in the Technology sector.
Select recent M&A transactions include:
Joe holds a bachelor’s degree with first class honors in Mathematics and Statistics from the London School of Economics and is a CFA® Charterholder.
Served as financial advisor to Verity, a portfolio company of Resurgens Technology Partners, on its sale to TMX Group
Served as financial advisor to FiscalNote on its sale of Dragonfly Intelligence and Oxford Analytica to Dow Jones, a division of News Corp
Served as financial advisor to Charlesbank on its strategic investment in IMPLAN
Served as financial advisor to New Mountain Capital and Endicott Capital on its strategic growth investment in Datassential
Served as financial advisor to Spectrum Equity on its growth investment in Benchmark Mineral Intelligence
Served as financial advisor to MediaRadar on its acquisition of Kantar Group’s Vivvix
As housing markets remain dynamic and loan volumes fluctuate, mortgage lenders face increased pressure to accelerate underwriting while maintaining rigorous compliance and risk controls. Underwriting has traditionally been a slow process, requiring manual review of income documents, identity verification, and credit risk across multiple data sources. Today, digitization and AI are reshaping the mortgage underwriting…
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries faster than ever before, the rising importance of Small Language Models (SLMs) is becoming increasingly prevalent. The distinction between SLMs and Large Language Models (LLMs) is primarily determined by the number of learned parameters in addition to the scale and specification of training data. SLMs typically contain millions…
As the adoption and rollout of renewable energy continues amidst a mixed global policy environment, it is increasingly important for renewables infrastructure to maximize cost-effectiveness and output. As a result, advanced data and analytics are transforming how stakeholders identify and evaluate locations for new renewable energy installations. By harnessing satellite imagery, historical weather data, and…
“Excitement has returned to fintech,” according to Solomon Partners Managing Director Joseph Watson , who characterized the positive mood at last month’s Money 20/20 , the premier gathering for executives in Fintech, Payments, and Financial Services, hosted in Las Vegas from October 26 to 29. Now in its 13th year, Money 20/20 featured keynote speeches…
For years, companies have invested heavily in collecting customer data from web clicks and app usage to purchase histories and demographics. Traditional Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) were designed to unify this data, remove silos and empower marketers to make more informed decisions. However, CDPs typically require copying data into separate systems, such as data warehouses.…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at an unprecedented pace in investment, innovation, and deployment. Yet governance, regulation, and control mechanisms have not progressed commensurately. AI’s speed, scale, and growing autonomy clearly outpace existing controls, posing risks that require structured and formal oversight. Regulators understand the imbalance, and Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) software forerunners recognize…
In the modern maritime industry, data has evolved from a passive byproduct of operations into a strategic asset that drives decision-making, enhances efficiency, and mitigates operational risk. As global trade becomes increasingly complex and regulatory environments more demanding, the ability to harness and analyze data is critical. At the heart of the maritime data transformation…
From Silicon Valley to Wall Street and businesses across the country, artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming corporate America. Across a multitude of industries, businesses have an insatiable need for high-quality, usable data—whether accessed proprietarily or via third-party sources—to fuel large language models (LLMs) that train AI on pattern recognition. AI is expected to add…
Introduction Quantum computing, a technology conceived in the early 1980s, has the power to revolutionize industries including finance, healthcare, logistics, and more. Although classical computers will continue to be necessary for day-to-day tasks, quantum computers (QCs) are far better equipped to handle more complex problems. For example, QCs can factor large numbers exponentially faster than…
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Market Thrives in 2024, Poised for Strong M&A in 2025 Amid AI and Digital Transformation Boom The GRC market was robust in 2024, showing significant momentum heading into 2025, fueled by: Proliferation of AI applications Ongoing digital transformation and cloud-based platform innovations Consolidation of GRC point solutions and continued M&A…
Real Estate & Construction Tech 2024 Year-in-Review and 2025 Outlook The Real Estate & Construction Tech sector continues to benefit from several long-term tailwinds, which the Solomon Technology team expects to contribute to a sustained recovery in 2025 and beyond. Disruption in the sector and the accelerated pace of innovation will drive the demand for…
Why Customization Is Key to Solving Generative Artificial Intelligence Hallucinations The Future of Human Interaction with Technology Generative AI is a fast-evolving artificial intelligence technology capable of producing a variety of new content, including code, images, music, text, and more. Generative AI models, whether in the form of AI-generated search results or chatbots that…
