What is AlphaSense?

Business / By / August 23, 2023

AlphaSense is an AI-based search and market intelligence company that was founded by CEO Jack Kokko and CTO Raj Neervannan in 2011.

The company provides a search engine that analyzes corporate and financial data from sources such as company records, broker research, transcripts, press releases, trade journals, and documents lodged with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

AlphaSense’s patented search engine incorporates artificial intelligence and natural language processing to easily find relevant snippets of information from dense, text-based documents. This enables the company’s clients to identify important insights faster than the competition.

Kokko, a former investment banking analyst in Silicon Valley, was inspired to start the company after spending hours poring over PDF documents with the CTRL+F function just to find a single useful piece of information.

The platform is now used by 85% of the companies on the S&P 100 list, 75% of the top asset management firms, 80% of the top consultancies, and the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies. 

How does the AlphaSense platform work?

The AlphaSense platform contains an extensive library of public, private, and proprietary content from the aforementioned sources across more than 68,000 companies. 

To derive insights from this immense volume of data, the user can search by keyword, company, or both. They can also use the NLP-powered Smart Synonyms feature which includes all relevant synonyms for a given search. 

The Smart Synonym feature accounts for the natural variance in language that occurs when people use a specific word. For example, a financial analyst will know that the word “securities” is interchangeable with shares, holdings, equities, and assets, and so forth. 

Since the AI can surface the best matches based on a search query, users can eliminate repetitive searchers and also reduce the likelihood of missing important information. 

How else does AlphaSense incorporate AI?

AlphaSense is primarily used by asset managers, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, corporate financiers, and equity research analysts. 

Here are a few ways AI is making their roles easier. 

AI searches millions of documents at scale

AI can search millions of documents at scale, and it does so without exhaustion and without missing any useful data points. Machine learning can also pick up on human subtleties in language and also analyzes images such as tables and charts.

When AI can produce results in a matter of seconds, the clear benefit to professionals is that they can spend time on more important tasks.

AI can generate ideas

In terms of financial research, AlphaSense AI can filter out the noise and identify the key insights about a company’s competitors and the broader market. Artificial intelligence can also identify trends and patterns, who is talking about a topic, and whether sentiment is positive or negative. 

Kokko noted that financial analysts who use machine learning as part of their workflow “are saving time from grunt work and instead are thinking and generating ideas, catching risks early, reacting to them, and knowing their customers better.”

AI reduces blind spots

The amount and speed with which data is published online increase the risk that some of it will be overlooked by even the most skilled or exhaustive of teams. AI reduces this risk because it can aggregate multiple datasets, sort for relevancy, and use NLP and other capabilities to extract the most relevant insights.

Confident they have the full, 360-degree picture of emerging industry trends, analysts can make predictions or provide forecasts to clients with confidence. 

Key takeaways:

  • AlphaSense is an AI-based search and market intelligence company that was founded by CEO Jack Kokko and CTO Raj Neervannan in 2011. The company’s patented search engine incorporates AI and NLP to find relevant snippets of information more easily from dense, text-based documents.
  • The AlphaSense platform contains an extensive library of public, private, and proprietary content from the aforementioned sources across more than 68,000 companies. Users can search the library with various tools and features powered by large language models.
  • AlphaSense is primarily used by asset managers, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, corporate financiers, and equity research analysts. AI can help them reduce blind spots, free up time for more important work, and generate key insights about a market, their employer, or its competitors.

Key Highlights

  • Founding and Purpose: AlphaSense is an AI-based search and market intelligence company founded by CEO Jack Kokko and CTO Raj Neervannan in 2011. The company’s core offering is a search engine that utilizes artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze and extract insights from a variety of corporate and financial data sources, including company records, broker research, transcripts, press releases, SEC filings, and more.
  • Patented Search Engine: AlphaSense’s search engine is designed to simplify the process of extracting relevant information from text-heavy documents. The patented technology incorporates AI and NLP to quickly identify important snippets of information within documents. This efficiency allows clients to gain insights more rapidly than competitors who rely on traditional methods.
  • Inspiration Behind Creation: Jack Kokko, a former investment banking analyst in Silicon Valley, founded AlphaSense after experiencing the frustration of manually searching through lengthy PDF documents for specific information. The need to improve information retrieval led to the development of the advanced search engine.
  • Usage and Clients: AlphaSense’s platform is widely used across industries. It is utilized by 85% of companies on the S&P 100 list, 75% of top asset management firms, 80% of leading consultancies, and the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies.
  • Platform Functionality: The AlphaSense platform hosts an extensive collection of public, private, and proprietary content related to over 68,000 companies. Users can search using keywords, company names, or a combination of both. The NLP-powered “Smart Synonyms” feature suggests relevant synonyms for search terms, enhancing search accuracy.
  • AI’s Role in AlphaSense: AI plays a central role in enhancing the roles of asset managers, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, corporate financiers, and equity research analysts. Some key ways AI contributes include:
    • Efficient Document Searches: AI can search through millions of documents quickly and accurately, saving professionals time and effort.
    • Idea Generation: AI can filter out noise and extract key insights from financial research, helping analysts identify trends, sentiments, and generate ideas.
    • Reducing Blind Spots: AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data helps analysts avoid overlooking important information. It aggregates and extracts insights from multiple datasets, offering a more comprehensive view.
  • Confident Decision-Making: AI-powered insights enable professionals to have a comprehensive understanding of emerging trends and market dynamics. This confidence supports better predictions and forecasts, enhancing their decision-making capabilities.

Read Next: History of OpenAI, AI Business Models, AI Economy.

Connected Business Model Analyses

AI Paradigm

current-AI-paradigm

Pre-Training

pre-training

Large Language Models

large-language-models-llms
Large language models (LLMs) are AI tools that can read, summarize, and translate text. This enables them to predict words and craft sentences that reflect how humans write and speak.

Generative Models

generative-models

Prompt Engineering

prompt-engineering
Prompt engineering is a natural language processing (NLP) concept that involves discovering inputs that yield desirable or useful results. Like most processes, the quality of the inputs determines the quality of the outputs in prompt engineering. Designing effective prompts increases the likelihood that the model will return a response that is both favorable and contextual. Developed by OpenAI, the CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) model is an example of a model that utilizes prompts to classify images and captions from over 400 million image-caption pairs.

OpenAI Organizational Structure

openai-organizational-structure
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that transitioned into a for-profit organization in 2019. The corporate structure is organized around two entities: OpenAI, Inc., which is a single-member Delaware LLC controlled by OpenAI non-profit, And OpenAI LP, which is a capped, for-profit organization. The OpenAI LP is governed by the board of OpenAI, Inc (the foundation), which acts as a General Partner. At the same time, Limited Partners comprise employees of the LP, some of the board members, and other investors like Reid Hoffman’s charitable foundation, Khosla Ventures, and Microsoft, the leading investor in the LP.

OpenAI Business Model

how-does-openai-make-money
OpenAI has built the foundational layer of the AI industry. With large generative models like GPT-3 and DALL-E, OpenAI offers API access to businesses that want to develop applications on top of its foundational models while being able to plug these models into their products and customize these models with proprietary data and additional AI features. On the other hand, OpenAI also released ChatGPT, developing around a freemium model. Microsoft also commercializes opener products through its commercial partnership.

OpenAI/Microsoft

openai-microsoft
OpenAI and Microsoft partnered up from a commercial standpoint. The history of the partnership started in 2016 and consolidated in 2019, with Microsoft investing a billion dollars into the partnership. It’s now taking a leap forward, with Microsoft in talks to put $10 billion into this partnership. Microsoft, through OpenAI, is developing its Azure AI Supercomputer while enhancing its Azure Enterprise Platform and integrating OpenAI’s models into its business and consumer products (GitHub, Office, Bing).

Stability AI Business Model

how-does-stability-ai-make-money
Stability AI is the entity behind Stable Diffusion. Stability makes money from our AI products and from providing AI consulting services to businesses. Stability AI monetizes Stable Diffusion via DreamStudio’s APIs. While it also releases it open-source for anyone to download and use. Stability AI also makes money via enterprise services, where its core development team offers the chance to enterprise customers to service, scale, and customize Stable Diffusion or other large generative models to their needs.

Stability AI Ecosystem

stability-ai-ecosystem

About The Author

Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
Scroll to Top
FourWeekMBA