When generative AI tools began making waves in late 2022 after the launch of ChatGPT, the finance industry was considered one of the primary to acknowledge these tools’ potential for speeding up the data-gathering and research process. Speed, in any case, is important whenever you’re advising investors who have to respond quickly to market changes.
Now a startup called Linq is entering this space with an AI agent that may automate quite a lot of tasks required for financial evaluation and research and has raised $6.6 million in a funding round led by InterVest and Atinum, with participation from TechStars, Kakao Ventures, Smilegate Investment and Yellowdog.
MIT alumni Jacob Chanyeol Choi and Subeen Pang founded Linq after they won the Samsung Open Collaboration in 2023, an accelerator-like program hosted by Samsung Financial Network. Choi told TechCrunch that win spurred him to construct large language models (LLMs) for enterprises, particularly the financial sector.
“We knew the potential for a tool that would seamlessly integrate with an organization’s data ecosystem, which led to the birth of Linq,” Choi said. “Our approach to embedding and retrieving data involves transforming data into vectors and employing techniques like vector search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to supply generative AI services.”
Boston-based Linq says its AI agent uses domain-specific (finance, on this case) search and enormous language models to automate all the pieces from scheduling and communication, to scanning research reports and constructing financial models. It will probably also summarize securities filings, earnings reports and call transcripts, and other company-specific information.
“Hedge fund analysts [and institutional investors], who have to cover tons of of equities, will initially experience probably the most significant productivity boost, starting with earnings call transcript summaries,” Choi said, adding that more general AI tools like ChatGPT cannot fill the gap.
Along with its B2B service for enterprise clients, the startup also plans to construct B2C tools for AI equity research. Choi said these tools will let users synthesize vast amounts of information and can support portfolio managers in making informed investment decisions.
Linq will go up against incumbents that serve the equity research space with their very own AI-powered offerings: Bloomberg’s terminals have a generative AI tool that may summarize earnings calls, and S&P has a document viewer that uses AI to surface relevant information from filings, transcripts, and presentations. It should also should contend with other startups like Fintool, Finchat and Finpilot, which also offer AI-powered platforms for financial researchers and institutional investors.
Choi thinks Linq has an edge, nevertheless. What sets his company aside from its competitors is that it offers an end-to-end service to administer workflow and streamline processes, Choi said. He identified that its proprietary data-gathering system provides investors access to a broad spectrum of structured and unstructured data from internationally, including live transcriptions of earnings calls in languages apart from English in countries outside the US.
Along with its tech, the startup has some expertise in the shape of its two other founding members: Jin Kim previously worked in quantitative finance, and Hojun Choi is a former Goldman Sachs banker who has also worked at a non-public equity firm.
The startup already has a couple of good names on its roster of consumers: Choi told TechCrunch that Linq has been working with Samsung Financial Network to automate their underwriting processes, along with greater than 20 enterprise customers that include Samsung’s affiliates, KPMG US, and hedge funds in Asia and the U.S.
The corporate, which also has an office in Seoul, South Korea, will use the brand new capital for product development, hiring staff, and expanding into the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. The 2-year-old startup has 12 staff and began generating revenue last October.
