by Matt Ober, General Partner at Social Leverage

One thing that is clear to me is that AI is going to give us all a lot more free time. We are going to get comfortable in the coming years having AI automate a lot of our repetitive tasks and we will soon have AI agents or assistants in all industries. What will we all do with all this free time?

I think about how much time in the investment industry is spent on building PowerPoint, research papers, and overviews of markets/industries. Most of this work involves internet research, reading other people’s work, reading transcripts and annual filings, and analyzing datasets. Arguably all of this can be automated by AI agents in the very near future.

A lot of this is within the capabilities now, but the chance of 100% accuracy is likely low.

The other area where I see a lot of time spent is expert network calls or people within the industry who aren’t through an expert network. The expert network space is one area where I see tremendous opportunity to integrate AI. Low-hanging fruit is the integration of an API like Finchat.io to make combing through expert network transcripts more efficient. This in my mind is a no-brainer for GLG, Guidepoint, Third Bridge, and the dozens of other expert platforms. Why wouldn’t they want to increase the engagement and time on the platform for their users by integrating an AI interface? Combine the transcripts they have from the last 10+ years with best-in-breed fundamentals, transcripts, charts, and more. This is an easy premium upgrade and something that can be done not only by the expert network platforms but many research providers as well.

Finance isn’t the only industry I think will become more efficient but it is the one I know most intimately. I am excited to think about who will be the new modern independent research providers and how they will do 10x their competitors with fewer people by leveraging AI throughout their content creation and research process. Or maybe we will see a current research provider go all in on an AI strategy and emerge as one of the strongest. Time will tell who will be the first to embrace AI and execute on a strategy.