More and more financial services firms have started deploying AI, highlighting it as central to their strategies.

The world’s largest money manager has built its own “virtual investment analyst,” dubbed “Asimov” to “scale” its people, according to the firm’s Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein per Bloomberg:

“While everyone else is sleeping at night, we have these virtual AI agents that are scanning research notes, company filings, emails, to generate portfolio insights.”

Goldstein said that he expects by the next investor day — the last one was two years ago — Asimov will be used across the firm to “scale our people.”

Context: Banks and investors have been rolling out their own AI tools for financial analysis, such as JPMorgan’s D.A.V.I.D., Man Group’s AlphaGPT, and Morgan Stanley’s AskResearchGPT.

New York-based Hebbia, founded by 27-year-old Stanford dropout George Sivulka, provides workflow automation to major financial firms and government agencies, allowing analysts to focus on higher-level tasks instead of repetitive work.

"Some of the smartest people in the world were doing some of the stupidest tasks," George Sivulka, explaining why he left his PhD program to build Hebbia after seeing brilliant peers stuck doing repetitive work at high-powered jobs. (NYPost)

Companies Using the Platform:

The company offers bespoke AI agents that automate complex workflows and generate investor memos. The New York based company raised $100 million in Series B funding last summer from investors led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Bloomberg is rolling out a new AI-powered tool that lets users search terminal and proprietary firm documents using plain language questions, aiming to make research as intuitive as talking to an analyst. (Waters Technology) $

I was struck by this statistic from a recent Gallup poll that shows AI use at work has doubled in a year, though companies aren’t sure how to manage it properly

Takeaway: When I first heard about ChatGPT a couple years ago, and had no real experience with it, I thought the same thing. “It’s just predicting words, right?” But once you start using the tech, the benefits are pretty obvious

Earlier this year, Bloomberg predicted up to 200,000 Wall Street jobs could be eliminated over 3-5 years as banks implement AI. In 2023, Goldman Sachs economists estimated that AI could affect 300 million jobs globally.

It is very early on and adoption is happening slowly but there’s been no major Wall Street layoffs. The most relevant story I can find this year is Morgan Stanley cutting 2,000 jobs in part of AI related gains. Professional sector unemployment (3.4%) remains below the national average (4.2%) according to the BLS. Major banks are hiring AI specialists even as they trim other roles.

Takeaway: Maybe AI automates a significant share of jobs, but not much evidence of that yet. The tech is also creating jobs:

From Wealth Management

Takeaway: Direct indexing continues to grow. AI is helping investors recreate indexes by handling tax-loss harvesting, personalizing portfolios, and making it cheaper and easier to mirror index performance. A customized portfolio for individual investors just wasn’t really technologically feasible until recently.

Related:

In last Sunday’s AI Street Markets, where I breakdown AI + investing tools, I showed how to connect an AI Chatbot, Claude, to thousands of datasets from the Federal Reserve. Claude then created a recession dashboard.

I’ve put together a calendar of upcoming AI and finance conferences. Click on the image below to access links and event descriptions. Let me know if I’ve missed any and I’ll add them. Thanks!