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Just when you thought AI was running out of industries to disrupt, Anthropic just released Claude for Financial Services and suddenly, that $25K-a-year Bloomberg Terminal is looking a bit… vintage.
Here’s what makes Claude for Financial Services different
- Claude can now combine external market data from S&P/FactSet/Morningstar with the firm’s own internal data (Databricks/Snowflake) to answer questions like “How did our tech portfolio perform vs. the S&P 500 tech sector?” without analysts having to manually pull from multiple systems.
- Need to run Monte Carlo simulations? Build proprietary trading models? Claude Code handles the heavy lifting, with expanded usage limits for those all-nighters before earnings calls.
- No more jerry-rigging APIs on your own. Claude comes with pre-built MCP connectors ready to plug into your existing financial data infrastructure.
- Expanded limits bump analysts from regular Claude’s 200K-token limit or about 500 pages to higher capacity thresholds and more queries per hour, so they can process massive 10-K filings and deal docs without hitting walls during market deadlines.
Big names are already believers
- Bridgewater estimates a 20% productivity gains.
- Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (NBIM) saved 213K hours.
- AIG compressed underwriting review time by 5x.
Here’s one reason why: On the latest Finance Agent Benchmark, Claude Sonnet 4 hit 44.5% accuracy on complex financial analyst tasks, which is neck and neck with OpenAI’s o3. For context, most models scored below 30%.
These aren’t simple “What’s Apple’s stock price?” questions — we’re talking multi-step SEC filing analysis that would make a first-year analyst sweat.
Claude isn’t alone in this financial AI arms race
Perplexity is another key player in the AI finance race, targeting individual analysts with three products.
- Perplexity Finance ($0): Free real-time stock prices, company analysis, and 13F comparisons…all wrapped in what they call a “delightful UI.”
- Enterprise for Financial Services ($40/month): FactSet integration and industry research. Teams save 10+ hours weekly per employee. One analyst said it summarized 48 hours of Q4 earnings work in 2 minutes.
- Perplexity Labs ($20/month): Custom dashboards and deep research reports in 10+ minutes.
The best story?
Stanley Druckenmiller used Perplexity to identify the top five Argentine ADRs, bought them all, and says his positions have grown significantly.
The crypto connection
Last week, Perplexity partnered with Coinbase to integrate real-time crypto data.
- Phase one launched with COIN50 index prices in Perplexity’s Comet browser.
- Phase two will connect queries directly to Coinbase trading.
CEO Brian Armstrong’s vision: Crypto wallets fully integrated into AI models. He believes this will create “another 10x unlock” for AI.
Imagine asking your AI to not just analyze Bitcoin, but actually buy it for you. Cue the obligatory “what could go wrong??” but I mean, yeah, who has the time to keep up with crypto trading — that market is going on 24 hours a day.
Why this matters
About 70% of US stock trading already runs through AI algorithms. This isn’t about replacing humans — it’s about upgrading their tools. And both tools have potential benefits.
Claude’s edge: Enterprise security, institutional data integrations, fantastic coding tools to build your own tech on top, and serious financial backing.
Perplexity’s edge: Accessibility, customizable dashboards, and better user experience. At $20-40/month vs. Bloomberg’s approximately $25K/year, it targets a much broader market… but financial pros are using it too.
Our take
This is natural evolution. The hodgepodge mess of financial data is finally getting the AI upgrade it desperately needed. Financial firms have used AI algorithms to trade for years. Now they’re using AI to understand what to trade. The winners will be anyone who’s struggled through a 10-K at 2 AM… or eventually wants to fire their financial advisor.
Think about that last part: When we get into the realm of agentic trading accessible for everyone, it won’t just be quant firms with a leg up to trade with, you’ll be able to tell your AI “I want to invest in these assets, hold these assets, and ditch these assets; maximize profits, minimize losses, and warn me if I’m making a mistake.”
While that type of 24/7 financial advisor on demand is still years away for us normies, the near term impact of these tools could be The Bloomberg Terminal becoming Bloomberg toast — not because these tools are perfect, but because they’re solving the real problem: making financial data actually usable.
Editor’s note: This content originally ran in the newsletter of our sister publication, The Neuron. To read more from The Neuron, sign up for its newsletter.