AlphaSense has spent more than a decade scaling an always-on business intelligence machine that alleviates research and workflow challenges for a majority of the world’s top corporate and financial services clients.
Recently, AlphaSense welcomed its global user base to AlphaSummit, our inaugural customer conference at the iconic Domino Refinery in Brooklyn, to learn how they are leveraging the AlphaSense platform to simplify and streamline their workflows.
Financial services professionals shared how they are transforming everyday workflows by leveraging AI to pinpoint the next disruptor, adopting emerging technologies to gain an edge, dispelling common perceptions about AI, and rethinking culture and recruiting hierarchies.
Dispelling AI Perceptions: Additive, not Detractive
The discussion around AI deep research tools resonated strongly with financial services attendees, with a panelist at the “From Signals to Strategy” session sharing that often output “looks better than anything my analysts have produced recently.” The fear of AI replacing roles was a common theme throughout the panels; but despite the strength of outputs obtained through deep research functionality, there was unanimous consensus that AI is not replacing critical research roles. Instead, it’s elevating their reach.
While there was initial industry hesitation to adopt AI-driven research tools, the sentiment echoed across panels was excitement about the ability to broaden analyst reach and fast-track their core functions. Across investment banking for example, AI has enhanced and automated traditional manual tasks of building a buyer list and first-pass analysis. With the reallocation of time and resources, junior analysts are now empowered and elevated to work on more strategic projects. According to Stefano Combi, VP at Evercore, this allows analysts early in their career to be “pushed up the workstream of opportunity.”
AI shifts have also paved the way for creative and value-driven analysis for clients, prioritizing creativity and originality above efficiency and utility to upscale better insights and findings.
Pinpointing the Next Disruptor
Photo: Natasha Motwani, Head of VC and Emerging Tech Coverage at UBS, at the panel discussion, “From Signals to Strategy: Tracking Emerging Trends in Public and Private Markets Through Workflow Automation”
In an environment with overflowing data, fast-moving market events, private company proliferation, and AI continuing to reshape research layers, the challenge is clear. Leveraging AI to separate signal from noise is crucial to drive smarter, quicker, and confident decisions.
Natasha Motwani, Head of VC and Emerging Tech Coverage at UBS observed: “Things are moving so quickly that you need [a platform like AlphaSense] to focus and absorb a lot of information you trust that has built-in guardrails.”
Motwani’s team at UBS leverages AlphaSense to gain a pulse on the more than 50,000 private companies in the United States to identify the next disruptor, distilling thematics, and performing SWOT analyses to identify potential M&A and IPO activity. The platform’s expansive private company coverage provides her team with transparency in an ordinarily “opaque” world, where themes and information trails are “not always obvious.”
It has become increasingly important to study how others have generated positive outcomes from their AI deployments and have enabled analysts to execute broader coverage with more independence, speed, and accuracy. Citing recent MIT report findings on generative AI enterprise pilots, Motwani added: “What does success look like for the 5% that succeed?”
Modernizing Diligence to Gain an Edge
Users of AlphaSense are finding that the “old way” of conducting research and diligence is no longer sufficient, and is incapable of keeping pace with deal and market speed to capitalize on opportunities. AI is accelerating the time to achieve confidence and diligence at speeds that were previously unattainable, such as tackling hundreds of diligence requests at a time, and ensuring every base is covered from a legal standpoint.
“From the sell side, we have hundreds of diligence request lists. Every time a new question comes in, a junior person has to go through endless Excels to find the answer, see if it’s a duplicate, and reach out to management. Now, I have that all plugged into AI. I can say, ‘hey, check if this question’s been answered before,’ give me a prompt answer, let me review it, and get it out. It allows me to enable people on the other side to be faster and create efficiency, which shortens the process and makes it much more competitive.” - Stefano Combi, VP at Evercore
Human Judgment Remains Irreplaceable
Photo: Carlyle Group’s Hunter Baltutat at the “Transforming Private Markets Insight” panel discussion
Advances in AI have ushered in automation and streamlined solutions that create efficiencies that flow upstream, and have in turn changed the way firms are thinking about training and deploying their talent. “If something is automated, analysts need to be taught how to critically review it,” Combi noted.
Therefore, human judgment remains an irreplaceable factor in successful and differentiated AI adoption, and is critical for building conviction and executing strategically. “At the end of the day, we are a people business,” Combi said. Critical, life-changing deals still hinge on reading tone and intention and need “human touch” to reiterate trust. “The person needs to be comfortable driving a tool, not the tool driving the person.”
This sentiment was echoed at the Transforming Private Markets Insight panel discussion: “[AI use is] still an art mixed in with science — in the modeling side of things, [specifically] deciding what kind of sensitivities you want to apply to project out different top line or operational metrics over a forecast period. I think AI still has barriers trying to achieve some of these things, and some require more detailed bottoms-up builds that AI is not there for yet,” said Cliffwater VP Marwan Zelmat. “You need a human touch to decide ‘what do I need to hit this certain return multiple?’.. Ultimately, there is a factor of explaining your work to an investment committee.”
Hunter Baltutat from the Carlyle Group added: “You’re going to need a human [factor] to have conviction; there will never be a fund that is completely AI. There are some qualitative things people will always want to see — people management, relationship building, things that AI can’t replace.”
Converting Insights to Value
Missed the event? Catch all the 2025 AlphaSummit on-demand sessions and register to join us for next year’s conference.
AlphaSense’s purpose-built AI-driven workflows fuel the entire business and finance ecosystem, powering the most important decisions with speed and confidence. Founder and CEO Jack Kokko shared the mission of “an always-on intelligence factory” in his keynote speech, as “one seamless system that reads everything 24/7, that puts the right insights and data points at the fingertips of decision makers. It knows the mind of the market to provide a full information mosaic. The companies that see around corners are the ones that win their markets.”
Try AlphaSense today and discover your edge.
