Fledgling fintech startup OpenBB is revealing the subsequent step in its plans to tackle the heavyweights of the funding analysis world. The corporate is launching a brand new, free model of a product that can open its arsenal of knowledge and monetary tooling to extra customers.
OpenBB is the handiwork of software program engineer Didier Lopes, who launched the Python-based platform again in 2021 as a method for newbie traders and lovers to do funding analysis utilizing completely different datasets at no cost, by way of a command line interface (CLI). The corporate went on to increase $8.5 million in seed funding from OSS Capital and angel traders corresponding to Ram Shriram, an early backer of Google.
Whereas the community-based, open-source undertaking has amassed some 50,000 customers, OpenBB has additionally been constructing an enterprise incarnation referred to as Terminal Professional. This paid model offers groups entry to an interface; pre-built database integrations; an Excel add-in; and numerous safety and help bolt-ons that may attraction to bigger companies.
OpenBB claims some big-name clients that embody delivery and logistics firm Pangaea Logistics Options and an unnamed funding agency, which Lopes says has $6.4 billion in property beneath administration.
Nonetheless, OpenBB is now trying to appeal to the varieties of consumers which may in any other case be tempted to take a look at Bloomberg Terminal or merchandise from upstarts like AI market intelligence startup AlphaSense, which raised at a $4 billion valuation in June 2024.
Terminal velocity
The all-new OpenBB Terminal — to not be confused with the earlier CLI-based OpenBB Terminal that the startup sunsetted in March — is a fully-fledged internet app, although it strips out lots of the premium options of Terminal Professional. It’s absolutely customizable, can run on any working system or platform, and supplies entry to an AI-enabled OpenBB copilot. Just like the earlier OpenBB Terminal, the all-new internet app can also be free to make use of.
OpenBB Terminal is maybe one thing of a middle-ground between the CLI-centricity of the open supply undertaking and the bells-and-whistles function set of the enterprise product.
“There was an enormous disconnect between the open-source group that we constructed and the enterprise providing, as a result of the enterprise product wasn’t accessible to everybody,” Lopes advised TechCrunch in an interview.
The OpenBB Terminal serves as a single end-point for accessing monetary data from some 100 knowledge sources, spanning fairness, choices, foreign exchange, the macro economic system and extra. Customers may throw all their new knowledge into the combination — the group has beforehand contributed monetary datasets corresponding to historic foreign money trade charges and crypto pricing knowledge. There are additionally a slew of extensions and toolkits to convey extra performance to OpenBB — corresponding to an AI inventory evaluation agent.
Customers are free to include their very own AI techniques and huge language fashions (LLMs), which is likely to be significantly vital for safety and compliance use-cases. However with the OpenBB Copilot, categorized as a “compound AI system,” customers can run natural-language queries about their knowledge out of the field.
Lopes highlighted one significantly quirky use-case to show why a extra versatile monetary analysis platform is likely to be fascinating to some corporations.
The case in query involved a delivery firm utilizing OpenBB to attach their e mail accounts with a personalized AI copilot to ask questions corresponding to, “What vessels are presently close to Rio de Janeiro?” or “What vessels are heading towards South Africa?”
However they’re additionally methods to combine different knowledge, to assist inform selections round costs.
“They’re utilizing AI to undergo all of their emails — and that’s lots of unstructured knowledge that’s laborious to parse,” Lopes mentioned. “However their final objective is to have the ability to ask questions primarily based on their emails, but in addition on structured knowledge corresponding to oil costs, so their copilot would possibly be capable of recommend the perfect pricing primarily based on all of that knowledge.”
As with many community-driven merchandise, OpenBB is principally utilizing OpenBB Terminal to focus on people who could — in the long term — assist drive signups for the premium enterprise incarnation.
“For those who see corporations like AlphaSense [and others], they’ve actually huge gross sales departments, it’s all very ‘outbound’,” Lopes mentioned. “We wish to go a totally completely different method, the place we leverage product-led development. We wish to have analysts, researchers, funds, and so forth utilizing our product at no cost, and bringing different folks from their crew onto it.”
OpenBB claims a distributed workforce of 15 workers in the present day, with Lopes eager to herald a couple of extra leaders — and he mentioned he has put some affords in to some with expertise at a number of the largest corporations within the monetary analysis area.
“This hiring will in all probability eat extra into our runway, so we’re probably going to lift [more funding] within the close to future,” Lopes mentioned.
The ‘Bloomberg’ issue
OpenBB has been in comparison with Bloomberg Terminal since its inception, and it’s simple to imagine that the “BB” in its identify is a nod to its big-name rival. However Lopes says it’s not.
For context, Lopes mentioned that each he and his co-founder James Maslek had misplaced cash betting on corporations through the mid-pandemic meme inventory craze, which noticed inventory from publicly-traded corporations corresponding to Gamestop and BlackBerry rise and fall dramatically because of social media-driven hype. And so Lopes launched GameStonk Terminal in early 2021 to combination monetary knowledge on publicly traded corporations and opponents; SEC filings; earnings reviews; and even market sentiment, conveyed by means of social networks corresponding to Reddit and Twitter.
A function article in Vice journal on the time referred to GameStonk Terminal as a “DIY meme inventory model of Bloomberg Terminal.”
Whereas Bloomberg Terminal is indispensable for a lot of, and has turn out to be one thing of a monetary trade commonplace, it prices within the area of $25,000 per person yearly. GameStonk Terminal was free, and the preliminary traction satisfied Lopes to stop his engineering job and concentrate on GameStonk full-time. This concerned rebranding as OpenBB in early 2022, “to indicate that we had been severe in regards to the firm,” as Lopes wrote on the time, elevating $8.5 million in seed funding.
“After we raised our seed spherical as an open supply platform — with a command line interface providing monetary knowledge integration — it was simple for folk to characterize us as an ‘open supply Bloomberg’,” Lopes mentioned. “However the ‘BB’ in our identify got here from the BlackBerry ticker, the place each my co-founder and I had been dropping cash within the inventory market.”
Whereas the comparisons are comprehensible, OpenBB isn’t precisely a drop-in alternative for Bloomberg Terminal, just because the startup can’t compete with the size and magnitude of the extra established product.
“For those who’re trying to us as a alternative for Bloomberg Terminal, that doesn’t actually work as a result of they’ve a lot knowledge,” Lopes mentioned. “There’s no different firm on the planet that has as a lot knowledge as Bloomberg.”
Furthermore, Bloomberg Terminal packs built-in chat performance that enables customers to speak with one another in real-time, bolstering its “flywheel” impact very similar to a conventional social community. That is one thing that OpenBB may replicate, and it has been designed in such a method that may make it simple sufficient for the corporate to embrace messaging sooner or later, with every person on its OpenBB Hub already having their very own distinctive profile and username.
“If we determined to have chat, we are able to faucet into these profiles and usernames, and it wouldn’t be an enormous stretch from there,” Lopes mentioned. “But it surely’s not but on the roadmap.”
On the flip facet, OpenBB offers customers the pliability to construct out their very own front-end interface, add options and extensions on high of the open supply product, and customise ’til the cows come house.
Whereas this highlights how the 2 merchandise in the end serve completely different functions, even when they do overlap, there may nonetheless be authorized headwinds forward for OpenBB.
Some 18 months after rebranding, OpenBB filed to trademark its identify final 12 months, with america Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) not too long ago publishing the applying to kickstart a 30-day interval the place the general public can increase objections to the trademark being granted. With the deadline approaching, USPTO acquired a request for a 90-day extension, which it granted — however what was most fascinating was that the request was submitted by Bloomberg.
Lopes mentioned that he’s not heard something from Bloomberg straight in regards to the potential trademark tiff, including that he’s not anxious on condition that the “BB” in his firm identify isn’t a reference to Bloomberg.
“If we had been utilizing ‘BBG,’ which is what folks usually use as an abbreviation for Bloomberg, we’d perceive,” Lopes mentioned. “However ‘BB’ is an enormous stretch.”
So, if it’s not attempting to be an ‘open supply various to Bloomberg’, what IS it attempting to be?
“Our top-line objective is to be the perfect AI-powered analysis and analytics workspace, constructing as a lot open supply as potential,” Lopes mentioned.
