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 manner for newbie traders and lovers to do funding analysis utilizing completely different datasets free of charge, by way of a command line interface (CLI). The corporate went on to elevate $8.5 million in seed funding from OSS Capital and angel traders equivalent to Ram Shriram, an early backer of Google.
Whereas the community-based, open-source mission has amassed some 50,000 customers, OpenBB has additionally been constructing an enterprise incarnation known as Terminal Professional. This paid model offers groups entry to an interface; pre-built database integrations; an Excel add-in; and varied safety and assist bolt-ons that will attraction to bigger companies.
OpenBB claims some big-name prospects that embody transport and logistics firm Pangaea Logistics Options and an unnamed funding agency, which Lopes says has $6.4 billion in property underneath administration.
Nevertheless, OpenBB is now trying to appeal to the varieties of consumers that 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 mission and the bells-and-whistles function set of the enterprise product.
“There was a big disconnect between the open-source community that we built and the enterprise offering, because the enterprise product wasn’t accessible to everyone,” Lopes advised TechCrunch in an interview.
The OpenBB Terminal serves as a single end-point for accessing monetary info from some 100 information sources, spanning fairness, choices, foreign exchange, the macro economic system and extra. Customers may throw all their new information into the combination — the neighborhood has beforehand contributed monetary datasets equivalent to historic foreign money alternate charges and crypto pricing information. There are additionally a slew of extensions and toolkits to carry extra performance to OpenBB — equivalent to an AI inventory evaluation agent.
Customers are free to include their very own AI techniques and enormous 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 information out of the field.
Lopes highlighted one significantly quirky use-case to exhibit why a extra versatile monetary analysis platform is likely to be fascinating to some firms.
The case in query involved a transport firm utilizing OpenBB to attach their e-mail accounts with a custom-made AI copilot to ask questions equivalent to, “What vessels are currently near Rio de Janeiro?” or “What vessels are heading toward South Africa?”
However they’re additionally methods to combine different information, to assist inform selections round costs.
“They are using AI to go through all of their emails — and that’s a lot of unstructured data that’s hard to parse,” Lopes mentioned. “But their ultimate goal is to be able to ask questions based on their emails, but also on structured data such as oil prices, so their copilot might be able to suggest the best pricing based on all of that data.”
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.
“If you see companies like AlphaSense [and others], they have really big sales departments, it’s all very ‘outbound’,” Lopes mentioned. “We want to go a completely different way, where we leverage product-led growth. We want to have analysts, researchers, funds, and so on using our product for free, and bringing other people from their team onto it.”
OpenBB claims a distributed workforce of 15 workers right now, with Lopes eager to herald a couple of extra leaders — and he mentioned he has put some presents in to some with expertise at a few of the largest firms within the monetary analysis house.
“This hiring will probably eat more into our runway, so we are likely going to raise [more funding] in the near future,” Lopes mentioned.
The ‘Bloomberg’ issue
OpenBB has been in comparison with Bloomberg Terminal since its inception, and it’s straightforward to imagine that the “BB” in its title 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 firms in the course of the mid-pandemic meme inventory craze, which noticed inventory from publicly-traded firms equivalent to Gamestop and BlackBerry rise and fall dramatically resulting from social media-driven hype. And so Lopes launched GameStonk Terminal in early 2021 to mixture monetary information on publicly traded firms and rivals; SEC filings; earnings reviews; and even market sentiment, conveyed by social networks equivalent to Reddit and Twitter.
A function article in Vice journal on the time referred to GameStonk Terminal as a “DIY meme stock version of Bloomberg Terminal.”
Whereas Bloomberg Terminal is indispensable for a lot of, and has grow to be one thing of a monetary business commonplace, it prices within the area of $25,000 per consumer yearly. GameStonk Terminal was free, and the preliminary traction satisfied Lopes to give up his engineering job and give attention to GameStonk full-time. This concerned rebranding as OpenBB in early 2022, “to show that we were serious about the company,” as Lopes wrote on the time, elevating $8.5 million in seed funding.
“When we raised our seed round as an open source platform — with a command line interface offering financial data integration — it was easy for folks to characterize us as an ‘open source Bloomberg’,” Lopes mentioned. “But the ‘BB’ in our name came from the BlackBerry ticker, where both my co-founder and I were losing money in the stock market.”
Whereas the comparisons are comprehensible, OpenBB isn’t precisely a drop-in substitute for Bloomberg Terminal, just because the startup can’t compete with the size and magnitude of the extra established product.
“If you’re looking to us as a replacement for Bloomberg Terminal, that doesn’t really work because they have so much data,” Lopes mentioned. “There’s no other company in the world that has as much data as Bloomberg.”
Furthermore, Bloomberg Terminal packs built-in chat performance that permits customers to speak with one another in real-time, bolstering its “flywheel” impact very like a conventional social community. That is one thing that OpenBB might replicate, and it has been designed in such a manner that will make it straightforward sufficient for the corporate to embrace messaging sooner or later, with every consumer on its OpenBB Hub already having their very own distinctive profile and username.
“If we decided to have chat, we can tap into those profiles and usernames, and it wouldn’t be a big stretch from there,” Lopes mentioned. “But it’s not yet on the roadmap.”
On the flip aspect, 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 finally serve completely different functions, even when they do overlap, there might nonetheless be authorized headwinds forward for OpenBB.
Some 18 months after rebranding, OpenBB filed to trademark its title final 12 months, with the USA Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) just lately publishing the applying to kickstart a 30-day interval the place the general public can elevate objections to the trademark being granted. With the deadline approaching, USPTO obtained a request for a 90-day extension, which it granted — however what was most attention-grabbing was that the request was submitted by Bloomberg.
Lopes mentioned that he’s not heard something from Bloomberg instantly concerning the potential trademark tiff, including that he’s not frightened provided that the “BB” in his firm title isn’t a reference to Bloomberg.
“If we were using ‘BBG,’ which is what people normally use as an abbreviation for Bloomberg, we’d understand,” Lopes mentioned. “But ‘BB’ is a big stretch.”
So, if it’s not making an attempt to be an ‘open source alternative to Bloomberg’, what IS it making an attempt to be?
“Our top-line goal is to be the best AI-powered research and analytics workspace, building as much open source as possible,” Lopes mentioned.
