Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is launching a package of new software services aimed at streamlining work for financial analysts, joining a growing number of AI companies vying to win business from Wall Street professionals. 

The new offering, called Claude for Financial Services, is designed to help analysts conduct market research, handle due diligence and make investment decisions, Anthropic said on Tuesday.

The product pairs Anthropic’s core enterprise and coding AI tools with information from third-party financial data providers, including FactSet, PitchBook and Morningstar, for customers with subscriptions to those services.

"This is the missing piece between an AI tool that’s interesting and cool, and one that’s deeply useful,” said Mike Krieger, chief product officer at Anthropic and co-founder of Instagram. 

"Right now, there’s a real moment of: If we don’t adopt these tools, we’ll be left behind by people who are doing it.”

OpenAI and Perplexity AI have also added features in recent months to attract customers in the financial services sector, with the goal of expanding the business uses of AI and boosting sales.

While Anthropic is smaller than OpenAI, its revenue is growing at a fast clip. The startup’s annualised revenue increased from US$3bil (RM12.7bil) to US$4bil (RM16.9bil) in the past month, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorised to speak publicly on private matters. 

Anthropic is looking to further its sales momentum with a new hire. The company has recruited Paul Smith, a former executive at ServiceNow Inc., to join as its first chief commercial officer later this year, the person said.

Krieger said Anthropic has already picked up traction in the finance sector in part because its AI excels at coding, which is often used in financial analysis. The new tools are meant to expand on that by helping finance professionals with investment memos, portfolio analysis and financial modelling, among other tasks. 

Some of the AI company’s existing customers in the sector include Bridgewater Associates, American International Group Inc. and Norges Bank Investment Management.

Finance is a "good bellwether for the kinds of security requirements we’ll need in other industries,” Krieger said, "because the data is so sensitive.” Anthropic said it will not use customer data that’s input into its financial services tool to train its AI models. – Bloomberg