The best finance AI updates you missed from the last 2 months
•By Dave Wang
A common question I always get is:
"There's so many new AI product updates. How do I keep up with the ones that matter for investing?"
Lucky for you I can keep track for you :)
And this week, I'm giving you the top feature releases from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic that IMO many people aren't taking full advantage of.
(this is based on my experience running AI corporate training at the large hedge funds, PE funds, and investment banks)
Below I'll cover:
A top 9 practical product upgrades worth knowing from the last two months
Ideas you can leverage those capabilities for investing use cases
My full excel repository of all ~350 substantive product updates from these labs
Claude
Anthropic has been pushing the cross-device syncing across Cowork / Code. The core devs have also suggested new ways of interacting with the new family of models.
Meaning you can now handle super complex work and control your computer via phone no matter where you are.
For example - I was in Las Vegas 2 weekends ago and remote controlled into my always-on computer while on the plane.
(I'd highly recommend getting a "always on" device like a Mac Mini or Mac Studio or Nvidia DGX if you haven't)
Delete your old skills
"Delete your old skills" more of a tip than a product launch.
But it's been an idea pushed by the Claude developers and one that has improve my quality of AI workflows on Claude.
If you rebuild or try executing manually your old skills, you can take advantage of new tools under the hood in the harness (e.g., new python capabilities)
Claude Code creator Boris Cherny said the team removed more than 80% of its old system prompt for Opus 5.
His advice was blunt: “Every six months, delete your CLAUDE.md, delete your skills, delete your hooks. See what the model does and it might surprise you.”
I've decluttered a lot of my Claude Skills & found big improvements re-running some processes manually with the new models!
My personal take on skill building if you're curious:
OpenAI’s biggest releases focused on putting Codex via the web UX. And computer vision.
ChatGPT Work and Scheduled Tasks
ChatGPT Work effectively now lets you execute Codex level of complex work + advanced tool calling native in the ChatGPT.com web UX.
It can keep working for hours, accept direction mid-run and return a document, spreadsheet, presentation or dashboard.
Things to use this for: Complex work on the road (e.g., plane, taxi), thematic research, advanced workflows if your firm doesn't allow Codex desktop app.
Show Codex a stable computer workflow. It drafts a reusable skill with the inputs, steps and completion checks required to repeat it.
(Anthropic also released this feature recently)
Example: Record yourself performing a quarterly process for downloading an IR package, renaming the files, updating a template and running reconciliation checks. Codex will turn this into an automation!
Microsoft / Copilot
We know Copilot has lagged OpenAI and Anthropic. But Microsoft shipped the most immediately useful workplace upgrades in this group.
Copilot Cowork and event-driven tasks
Copilot Cowork is Microsoft's 'licensed' offering of the Claude Cowork product. If you're stuck with only Copilot, this is your best surface area to do vast majority of finance work.
I'm surprised more Cowork users aren't defaulting to Copilot Cowork.
One interesting feature in this is event-driven work (with native connectivity to Microsoft ecosystem). An Outlook email or Teams message can start the assignment automatically.
An earnings release can now move through a complete workflow:
Sell-side email arrives → Cowork retrieves the files → compares vs model → updates team on email → flags what changed
Microsoft now has a credible answer to Claude Code / Codex inside the software many firms already use.
Agentic Copilot in Excel
Copilot in Excel can propose an edit plan, identify the affected ranges and formulas, execute the changes and link each change back to the workbook.
Give it the live model, the quarterly reporting package and your workbook rules.
It can map actuals, roll the schedules, build the earnings bridge and flag broken reconciliations inside the existing file.
The agentic plumbing around AI for Excel is improving fast!
Google
Google’s best releases use the distribution advantage it already has across Workspace, Chrome and Android.
One note if you're stuck on the Gemini ecosystem: The model lab is also going through a hard reset. Google's top AI engineers have left for OpenAI / Anthropic / stepped away generally. This makes it harder for them to keep pace on model upgrades next 6 months.
Gemini Spark and event triggers
Gemini Spark is a persistent cloud agent that can work in the background. It also supports custom MCP connections and event triggers.
Example: You could ask Spark to monitor an investor-relations page, pricing page, job board and relevant news.
When something changes, it collects the evidence, compares it with the prior state and updates the company brief.
Spark is still a pilot. But this now gives every investor access to advanced scraping / alt data capabilities.
