Perplexity AI, one of the leading GenAI startups, is launching a host of new services to its paid business customers that will help them make informed financial decisions. These include a knowledge search platform, a financial information tool and a data repository.
Internal Knowledge Search allows companies to simultaneously search the organization’s files and the Internet with a single query.
“We want Perplexity to be the central knowledge base and research platform for everyone,” Aravind Srinivas, founder of Perplexity AI, said in an interview with a media house. He added that it would help users with research inputs including due diligence, documents and proprietary information.
The company believes that helping is one of the most important use cases for this feature financial service providers conduct more robust due diligence using internal research, phone calls and the latest industry news.
Recently, Perplexity AI introduced Perplexity for Finance, which provides real-time stock quotes, historical earnings reports, peer comparisons, and detailed company financial analysis, all with a beautiful user interface. “These decisions are worth it several million or even billions of dollars. So it’s worth using a tool that gives you more clarity,” says Srinivas.
Perplexity AI will soon add its own third-party data integrations with Crunchbase and FactSet for Enterprise Pro customers with active subscriptions. “We will do the same for industries outside the financial sector, such as legal and healthcare,” Srinivas said.
“With this kind of data integration, Perplexity could become the default place for capital markets research and perhaps disrupt online sites/forums. It could potentially affect stock prices by what’s in it!” wrote one user on X.
The new financial analyst?
With the new financial analytics feature, Perplexity AI can help fintech companies and banks, which are currently built in-house as they are wary of their data being leaked.
Today, people rely on a variety of services such as Bloomberg Terminal, Stockopedia, Refinitiv Eikon, Yahoo Finance, Fidelity Investments, Robinhood, Zerodha and Groww. Nevertheless, these companies are struggling to get the most out of generative AI.
‘Wait until they have processed all the reports and files. This is the next generation of Google Finance or Yahoo Finance. A smart bank, asset manager or securities firm would partner with Perplexity AI to build this into their platform/app,” said a user on X.
Michael J. Miraflor, an independent consultant at Third City, compared the tool to a Bloomberg Terminal for regular users, saying, “Is this… Bloomberg Terminal Lite for standards? (I know that’s not what this is trying to be, but there are several examples of AI information aggregators moving in that direction.)”
Similar to Perplexity’s product, other leading financial institutions are also building GenAI products to deliver better services.
For example, JPMorgan recently announced the launch of a generative AI tool for its employees – an in-house version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT that can effectively perform tasks typically performed by research analysts.
The new major language model platform, called the LLM Suite, will be available to employees of JPMorgan’s asset management division. It uses third-party models to support tasks such as writing, idea generation, and document summarization.
Earlier this year, JPMorgan began rolling out the LLM Suite to select areas within the bank, reaching approximately 50,000 employees, or approximately 15% of the workforce.
One of JPMorgan’s standout offerings is Quest IndexGPT, a tool powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 thematic investing model. IndexGPT analyzes news articles and generates keyword-driven investment themes, helping clients make more informed decisions.
Bloomberg recently introduced BloombergGPT, a model trained on more than 50 billion parameters. It helps users interpret financial documents, reports and invoices.
A potential threat to Perplexity for Finance could be OpenAI’s upcoming SearchGPT, although it has yet to be released.
Recently, researchers at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business published a paper stating that OpenAI’s GPT-4 can perform as well as or better than human experts in financial statement interpretations.
Using a method called chain-of-thought, the researchers trained GPT-4 to simulate the mental processes of a human financial analyst. This allowed it to analyze and predict future market movements.
The team taught the model to make accurate predictions by recognizing patterns, calculating ratios and synthesizing data. The study claimed that GPT-4 could predict future earnings direction with 60% accuracy, outperforming the majority of human financial analysts, who averaged 53% and 57% accuracy.
Google is not a threat
Srinivas is least concerned about Google today. “Each search on Perplexity consists of an average of 10 to 11 words. Each search on Google consists of approximately two to three words, giving users a much higher intent on each search, allowing them to ask more targeted questions,” he says.
In addition, Perplexity AI has introduced a new feature called Spaces. Users can now upload and save files, making it easier to manage and access essential documents. In addition to searching the web, Spaces also allows users to search through their uploaded files, streamlining information retrieval.
Another exciting feature is the ability to select an AI model of your choice, giving users flexibility in their tasks. Additionally, users can write custom instructions to receive customized responses that better suit their specific needs.
Earlier this year, Google introduced AI Overviews, but it did not receive a strong response. Unlike AI Overviews, which struggle with complex, multi-layered questions, Perplexity’s results can effectively process multiple questions at once, delivering accurate answers and relevant links.
Additionally, Google’s AI overviews also recently came under fire for suggesting that users should use glue to stick cheese on their pizza, based on a comment from an 11-year-old Reddit user.
