Bloomberg Faces AI-Powered Rivals
Bloomberg has launched an in-house AI agent, "AskB<GO>," to help users navigate its proprietary dataset. The move comes as the financial data terminal faces new competition from DIY alternatives, with some developers claiming they can replicate advanced features using AI prompts.
- A single Bloomberg Terminal subscription costs between $25,000 and $32,000 per year, a significant factor driving the search for more affordable alternatives. - Competitors like Refinitiv Eikon and FactSet are established rivals, with annual costs that can be thousands of dollars less than a Bloomberg Terminal. Newer, more specialized AI-native platforms are also emerging, such as StratPilot for options trading and AlphaSense for market intelligence. - Some startups are offering AI-powered financial analysis tools for as low as $19 per month, claiming a 98.6% cost reduction compared to a Bloomberg Terminal. - Bloomberg's "AskBGO" is part of a broader AI strategy the company has been developing for over a decade. This strategy includes the development of BloombergGPT, a proprietary large language model trained on a massive dataset of financial documents. - The proprietary dataset "AskBGO" navigates includes traditional market data and "alternative data," such as anonymized credit card transaction analytics from a panel of over 20 million consumers, covering thousands of companies. - This alternative data, accessible through the ALTD <GO> function, is designed to give investors earlier insights into a company's performance before official earnings announcements are made. - In addition to "AskBGO," Bloomberg is rolling out other AI-powered tools, including AI-generated summaries of earnings calls and a "Document Search and Analysis" function that allows users to ask questions in natural language. - Bloomberg's in-house team of 400 research analysts helps train its AI models to better understand the nuances of financial language and anticipate what is important to investors.
