The Future of Fintech: Kensho’s Warren A.I. Breaks Records
When I first heard of Daniel Nadler’s startup, Kensho, being acquired by S&P Global over a phone call with my dad just about a week or so ago, I typed what I thought were relevant search terms into Google, hit enter, and sat back as the search engine’s algorithm worked its magic to provide me with the top results. With the majority of the headlines reading “record-breaking,” “historic,” and $550 million,” I knew I had to give this news a quick read. So, here are some of my quick thoughts.
For those unfamiliar with Kensho like I was, the artificial intelligence startup founded in Cambridge, MA of just over 120 employees and backed by numerous blue-chip firms such as Google Ventures and General Catalyst applies machine learning technologies and algorithms to answer financial analysis questions. Just as the everyday person searches for answers on Google like I did, Kensho’s algorithm, Warren (named after the investment guru of course), provides an instantaneous filtering of millions of financial data points in search of potential patterns to provide results that increase the power of analysts. If you were wondering, yes, it is as simple as typing a question into a text box.
So how does Kensho do this? To avoid all the technical details, FORBES wrote in May 2014 that a search by Warren scans “more than 90,000 actions such as drug approvals, economic reports, monetary policy changes, and political events and their impact on nearly every financial asset on the planet.” With its impressive archive of information, and even more now with S&P Global’s data catalogue, the program that builds upon itself and will only become more powerful over time. After news of the acquisition broke, FORBES followed up by commenting “Kensho’s mission to democratize quantitative analysis went against a culture that valued secrecy and exclusivity.” This makes perfect sense since the Nadler faced so many rejections that he himself was quoted saying he “thought the company was going to fail.”
I believe that the success of Kensho and its artificial intelligence technology is a major stepping stone for the new algorithms out of the Silicon Valley technology bubble and into the world of “fintech.” Moves like this by companies founded around the country, and of course around the world, are the building blocks for further applications of these technologies into fields such as medical and media.
Alexander Mo
EEVM | IQ Associate
