“What happens to the share prices of energy companies when oil trades above $100 a barrel and political unrest has recently occurred in the Middle East?”
Forget scouring the markets and calculating the massive financials for the answer to the question above.
Cambridge-based Kensho has created Warren, an intelligent market research assistant, that can do the number crunching around those asset prices in regards to geopolitical events for you. And with a newfound $10 million in seed funding to aid in expansion, the startup might be able to introduce you to him soon.
Warren: Even the name of the software – err, research assistant – sounds like he belongs buttoned up in a pricey suit with some pocket square flair striding briskly towards the trading floor.
The startup's team of ex-Google and Apple engineers created Warren to shorten traditional investment research cycles from days to minutes, according to the release. Kensho claims that Warren can already understand one million distinct types of natural language questions about the impact of global events on stocks and other assets. By the end of the year, the company predicts Warren will be able to answer 100 million types of complex financial questions.
Daniel Nadler, CEO of Kensho, stated in the release:
If you look at what Apple is doing with ‘Siri,’ what IBM is doing with ‘Watson,’ and what Google is doing with ‘Now,’ it is clear that the most powerful technology companies are investing immense resources to make virtual intelligent assistants ubiquitous before the end of the decade. Until now, we haven’t seen systems optimized for finance—one of the largest industries in the world.
Kensho is dedicated to the idea that communicating in natural language with intelligent computer systems which serve as virtual personal assistants will form the leading edge of global innovation over the next half-decade, and will transform not just the consumer space, but industries from medicine and finance to energy and defense as well.
The 20-person startup was founded in 2013 out of MIT, Harvard University and Stanford University. Kensho also boasts a stacked team of advisors, including CEO of the New York Stock Exchange and Bloomberg Enterprises Stanley Young; former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Jim Shinn; and KAYAK founders Paul English and Bill O'Donnell, among others.
The round, announced Wednesday, was filled with top investors, including General Catalyst, New Enterprise Associates and Google Ventures.
