By Tee Lip Hwe, Senior Librarian, Research & Data Services
By now, we are quite familiar with literature review tools like Scopus AI, Undermind, scite.ai assistant, etc, that marry traditional academic paper search with generative AI capabilities.
But what about financial databases? You might be surprised to hear that in fact, many databases that focus on business, economics and finance data have begun to weave in generative AI features, both in small and big ways.
This article presents a quick look at some notable emerging AI tools or enhancements in finance-related database resources.
Crunchbase's AI Search Builder
Crunchbase was recently relaunched as an AI-powered solution to predictive company intelligence.
The following image captured shows the capability of the Crunchbase's AI-enhanced query builder to understand the subject/topic-specific business abbreviation 'AIDD' to mean 'AI-enabled Drug Discovery', and construct the search.
Other new game-changing features include uncovering real-time predictions, forecasting company milestones, and conducting in-depth research with its new AI agent Crunchbase Scout. Watch a video introducing the new crunchbase.ai.
For an overview of Crunchbase's company predictions and insights, go to https://support.crunchbase.com/hc/en-us/articles/37501864933651-Profile-Features-Predictions-Insights.
Capital IQ Pro's ChatIQ
Developed in partnership with Kensho Technologies, S&P Global's AI innovation hub, the new ChatIQ, a Generative AI-powered assistant, enhances the platform's search and analytics functionality, and brings intuitive Document Intelligence solution to play.
Using the new ChatIQ, within an Investment Research document, engage in interactive conversation for deeper intelligence and insights.
AI in Bloomberg
Bloomberg leverages AI across four key areas: extraction, enrichment, search, and summarisation.
On Bloomberg Search, Bloomberg AI detects your query intent to return the most relevant results, ranked with IR (Information Retrieval) techniques.
Two examples of AI-supported Bloomberg functions such as NSTM (News Themes) employing Bloomberg AI to categorise stories by semantic similarity, showcasing a set of representative headlines and an automated summary for each group of stories; TREN (News Trends) with news and social equity sentiment scores produced by AI models that are trained on news stories and social media posts, simplifies news consumption and enhances relevant information discovery.
In addition, Bloomberg users can now ask questions in transcripts and obtain relevant insights using everyday language through its AI-Powered Document Insights, a GenAI research tool designed to extract insights from transcripts. Users can Ask a Question or select the suggested query, and click the answer to grasp it within the transcript context.
Use the DS (Document Search) function to experience AI-Powered Document Insights within Bloomberg's Document Viewer.
Whereas, generative AI technology is utilised in AI-Powered Earnings Call Summaries, accessible from the Key Notes tab, to quickly read, extract and highlight key points from earnings call transcript, which are systematically categorised into trending topics and themes of the transcript.
The image below displays instances of summaries of the Guidance topic for an Apple Inc Earnings Call.
Export the complete AI-Powered Earnings Call Summary in PDF format by navigating to the Key Notes tab and click the Download button.
For more information on Bloomberg AI including its GenAI and LLM vision, and a list of functions enhanced by Bloomberg AI, access the AIBB (Overview of Bloomberg AI) function.
Wind's Alice
Wind Financial Terminal 万得金融终端 (WFT)'s intelligent financial assistant Alice stands out by offering a suite of AI-driven functionalities including Alice Chat, Alice Writer, Alice Reader, etc, that streamline data analysis with intelligent Q&A, content creation, smarter reading, etc.
The following images show snapshots of Alice Chat responding swiftly and accurately to an inquiry into China's AIDD (AI-driven drug discovery) companies and their latest development, and BYD's performance report generated by Alice Writer.
With more than 40 report templates, Alice Writer enables you to quickly generate content effortlessly.
Conclusion
While there has been a lot of focus on energy on the use of generative AI features for literature review in the past 2-3 years, a new front is emerging when it comes with financial type databases.
This is an even more unexplored area, with many and different possibilities relating to data extraction, manipulation and analysis. There is no clear precedence on how it should be employed, what features are likely to be useful and what to look out for or if they are even worth paying for. Users are highly advised to use these features with extreme caution.
Note:
- To access Crunchbase and Capital IQ Pro, go to SMU Libraries' A-Z Databases.
- To access Bloomberg Terminal and Wind Financial Terminal, visit Investment & Data Studio at Li Ka Shing Library.
- The new features highlighted in this article reflect ongoing development. Their availability may change or evolve over time, depending on future updates or strategic considerations at the discretion of the product or vendor team.
References
Bloomberg L.P. (2025). Bloomberg Terminal.
Crunchbase. (2025). Crunchbase.
S&P Global Market Intelligence. (2025). Capital IQ Pro.
Transforming Financial Analysis: The Power of Generative AI in S&P Capital IQ Pro. (2024, November 15). S&P Global Market Intelligence. https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/transforming-financial-analysis-the-power-of-generative-ai-in-sp-capital-iq-pro
Wind Information Co., Ltd. (2025). Wind Financial Terminal.