Exegy launches Nexus to cut market data costs by over 40%

Exegy has launched Nexus, a platform designed to address the longstanding challenges associated with market data infrastructure in capital markets.

The company stated that Nexus replaces traditional, server-heavy feed handler systems with appliances and network interface cards leveraging field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. Exegy claims that Nexus is able to deliver low-single-digit microsecond performance, requiring only a single CPU core on client servers and reducing the datacentre footprint by more than 40% compared to previous solutions.

Performance and efficiency

Nexus delivers market data to software applications in approximately two microseconds, enabling trading strategies to respond in under three microseconds. The company described the jitter as extremely low, with processing occurring at line rate in a single hop through an FPGA. Integrated Level 1 switching offers scaling of appliances within the datacentre.

According to the company, client servers allocate only one CPU core to consume normalized market data from an appliance that manages all feeds centrally. Exegy reported that operating costs can be reduced by more than 40% due to the smaller hardware footprint required.

David Taylor, Chief Executive Officer at Exegy, highlighted the potential benefits of the platform for trading firms. He said,

"Sustained volatility and high volumes present attractive trading opportunities to savvy firms with the strategies and moxie to capture them. Nexus offers them a transformative tool to conquer the unattractive compromises that they would otherwise have to make when building their trading platform. With Nexus, we leveraged our proven FPGA expertise to fundamentally reimagine market data processing along the full data path from raw tick to executed trade."

Cost savings claims

Exegy cited a return on investment analysis with a US equities broker, where Nexus reportedly delivered up to 41% in infrastructure savings. The company said that replacing conventional, software-based systems with the managed Nexus appliance reduced the number of servers required from 32 to 22, lowering operational costs by 36% and saving an estimated $1.4 million per site annually. With the addition of Nexus SmartNICs to offload the application programming interface layer, the server count was reduced further to 17, providing close to $2 million in annual savings. Exegy indicated that this approach also improved consistency, eliminated jitter, and reduced the overall complexity of the system.

Integration and deployment

Nexus is said to provide integration into the broader trading technology stack, supporting both application-level data consumption and execution workflows. The platform is compatible with Exegy's tick-to-trade and execution solutions, SREX and nxAccess, which enables the building of trading infrastructures designed for high performance.

For market makers and Smart Order Routers, Exegy said the platform delivers both raw and normalized market data directly to FPGAs within client systems, which in turn supports ultra-fast order routing either to co-located exchanges or over wireless networks to remote data centres. Initial market deployments are centred on equities and futures, with support for additional asset classes and new features, such as fast-cancel and sweeping logic for agency brokers, to follow in future releases.

The company described the development of Nexus as the outcome of significant discussions with industry professionals, including agency brokers, hedge funds, and market makers. Their feedback on the core challenges of market data delivery influenced the platform's design and functionality. Exegy said this engagement with the industry was fundamental in shaping Nexus to meet current and future demands for scalable and high-performance market data delivery.

Market perspective

Laurent de Barry, Vice President, Ultra-Low Latency Trading Products at Exegy, commented on the benefits of consolidating market data infrastructure. He stated,

"Most firms still rely on disconnected systems to manage different market data workflows. This leads to unnecessary complexity, duplicated costs, and limited scalability. Instead of relying on traditional, server-heavy deployments, Nexus consolidates data infrastructure needs into a single, efficient, FPGA-powered platform that supports global market visibility. This gives a centralized, scalable delivery of market data with fewer servers, less power consumption and lower costs."

Nexus is now open for orders, with production delivery expected in early Q4 2025. The solution is provided as a fully managed service, which includes deployment, monitoring, and customer support. An integration environment has been made available for early adopter clients to facilitate application development and testing with access to the production application programming interface.