UPDATED 00:52 EDT / MARCH 03 2017

BIG DATA

Kensho gets $50m backing to bring AI-based investment tools to Wall Street

If there’s one industry where artificial intelligence can make a real difference, it’s got to be in the financial markets. By powering a new breed of software solutions that can provide automated recommendations on what to do next, AI has the potential to drive enormous profits for Wall Street investors.

With that in mind, it’s no great surprise to see Kensho Technologies Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup whose AI-powered solution helps investors to better understand the markets, has just raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by S&P Global Inc. In addition, the company said it has signed a major deal with S&P Global to use its investment analytics software.

The round, which values Kensho at $500 million, also saw participation from several major banks and financial firms, including The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Each of those banks is using Kensho’s platform, either in production or testing, said Adam Broun, chief operating officer at Kensho, in an interview with Forbes, which first broke the news of the company’s funding round.

Kensho, which was founded by its current Chief Executive Daniel Nadler in 2013, uses a machine learning system to scour the internet for unstructured data in the form of news reports, articles, analysis, facts and figures and other commentary. The company uses an algorithm to transform the mishmash of information into structured data that it uses to populate something called the Kensho Global Event Database. Kensho further models the relationships between the data it accumulates and the performance of stock markets via its Knowledge Graph, enabling investors to better understand how events might affect the share price of different organizations.

Kensho said the new partnership with S&P Global would allow it to access the latter firm’s trove of market data, enabling the two organizations to build new products together. In addition, S&P will also have a representative sit on Kensho’s board in an observer capacity.

“The relationship with S&P Global is an excellent strategic fit, and it will deliver new innovations and joint developments to the market,” Nadler said in a statement. “The coming era will be looked back upon as the ‘AI era,’ when AI became the defining competitive advantage for corporations, government agencies, and investment professionals alike.”

With the new funds, Kensho is planning to buy more data sets for Kensho’s algorithms to access, CFO Broun told the Boston Business Journal. In addition, the company wants to bring its platform to new markets, though it declined to elaborate on which ones.

Kensho currently has around 80 employees on its books, around 50 of whom are based in its Cambridge office. The company now plans to grow “aggressively” following the latest round, and has around 31 vacant job positions on its website.

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