Perplexity’s new AI tool makes stock market research ‘delicious’. Here’s how

I am not a day trader. In the 1990s, I dabbled in cocoa futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange through Globex. However, you may have noticed that I am not a commodity millionaire. Still, I know a thing or two about the stock market, and I think Perplexity AI, the new finance-focused platform from fast-growing AI company Perplexity Finance, can be useful for stock traders neophytes

Also: Want a free year of Perplexity Pro? Here’s how to claim it

What is Perplexity Finance?

Perplexity Finance aims to provide users with a comprehensive set of tools to explore company financials, stock performance and industry comparisons. The tool has a wide variety of capabilities, including real-time stock quotes, historical earnings reports, industry peer comparisons, and detailed analysis of company finances.

Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, highlighted the platform’s user interface, describing it as “simply lovely”. That’s all well and good, but even though its interface is easy to use, no one wants AI hallucinations to turn into a gambling nightmare when betting money on the market.

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While Perplexity hasn’t provided any details on how the new service works, I took a closer look at the site’s results. I discovered that the hard data does not come from a great language model (LLM) but from the respected Financial Modeling Prep (FMP). FMP’s claim to fame is that it provides “the most accurate financial data available on the market.” It provides this data through application programming interfaces (APIs) to numerous clients, including Perplexity and from Perplexity to you.

So Perplexity Finance’s data seems more reliable than you might expect from an AI company. Specifically, the tool offers:

• Real-time stock quotes and price tracking
• Historical data and earnings views
• Industry peer comparisons
• Basic financial analysis tools

However, Srinivas cautioned about X: “Much more work is needed to be a complete end-to-end market research tool: ingesting 10q and 10k and enabling deeper research into proxy statements, annual reports and earnings.”

He is right: there is work to be done. For example, just getting to Perplexity Finance is a bit tricky. The tool is only available on desktop. You cannot use it on your smartphone. If you use Perplexity’s Focus feature set for finance, you won’t use the new feature. Instead, you’ll use Perplexity AI’s regular LLMs to work on financial matters.

How to use Perplexity Finance

To use the new inventory mode, you need a Perplexity Pro account. This costs $20 per month. With this account, search with the word “stock” and the company name. If your results start with a chart of recent stock prices, you’re on the right track. Below the results, you’ll find a link to “More about the company name.”

Also: I put the free version of Perplexity.ai to my coding tests

Looking ahead, Perplexity will add more data. In a quiet press release, Perplexity announced that it is entering into a strategic partnership with Crunchbase. According to Crunchbase Chief Product Officer Megh Gautam, Crunchbase will deliver its “powerful private enterprise data to Perplexity’s Enterprise Pro users via our Data Licensing API.” This partnership will provide Crunchbase’s proprietary data, “covering firms, financials and much more difficult to find for private companies.”

In addition, Perplexity has partnered with enterprise data company FactSet to provide its trusted data to their “mutual clients,” Kristy Karnovsky, executive vice president and head of trading and wealth at FactSet, said in a statement: ” Together, we are revolutionizing the way people and businesses gather information and insights from a vast repository of robust structured/unstructured financial data.”

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To access these data sources, you must be an Enterprise Pro account user with a FactSet or Crunchbase subscription. Enterprise Pro is available for companies with less than 250 employees for $40/month/seat or $400/year/seat. Larger companies will need to contact Perplexity directly.

This move positions Perplexity to compete more directly with established financial data providers and search engines. The company has made significant strides in the AI-powered search market, with its chatbot gaining popularity for its ability to summarize search results, provide citations and help users refine their queries.

As Perplexity expands into the financial sector, it will be interesting to see how the company navigates the competitive landscape and addresses current concerns about copyright infringement. If Perplexity Finance is successful, its achievements will go a long way toward cementing the company’s position as a major player in AI.

At this stage of the game, however, Perplexity Finance needs a lot more refinement before it can be called a true competitor to existing stock analysis software such as Stock Rover, WallStreetZen, and TradingView.