Why We Launched Telescope: Unlocking AI in Investing

Investing is an inherently forward-looking endeavor. Investors are constantly trying to identify trends, events, and innovations that will shape the future value of companies and assets. However, the vast amount of data and complexity in financial markets can make it challenging to connect the dots and turn ideas into action. This is where artificial intelligence can make a huge difference.

At Telescope, our mission is to inspire the future of investing. Leveraging AI, we’re reducing friction for investment discovery. We believe that AI has the potential to profoundly augment human intelligence when it comes to discovering investment opportunities.

We first saw the promise of this approach with our consumer app, Potato. Potato enabled anyone to prompt AI with a prediction about the world, and receive a basket of stocks poised to benefit. The app was a breakout success, with over 3,000 users creating more than 2,500 investment baskets. Potato trended on Product Hunt and caught the attention of major venture capital firms, international brokerages, and crypto companies.

This demonstrated substantial demand for AI-powered investing tools. So we launched Telescope to focus specifically on B2B, serving financial institutions with enterprise-grade API solutions.

Telescope provides brokerage apps with AI-powered APIs that enable thematic investing. Our tools allow investors to simply describe an event, trend, or scenario they believe will impact markets. Telescope’s proprietary meta-model works with a prompt such as “space tourism” and outputs a basket of stocks poised to benefit. This reduces the manual research, Googling or filtering, while giving a user hyperpersonalized results for a theme that they care about.

Not only this, but in an ever-changing, complex world filled with disruptive technology and unpredictable macro forces such as geopolitics, AI can respond more rationally to a change. With our tools, investors can respond sensibly to any scenario, such as a “giant tsunami has hit Seattle”, or “lab-made gold is now cost-effective”.

Under the hood, Telescope leverages large language models and is fine-tuned on your dataset.

Of course, AI on its own has limitations. Telescope combines algorithmic discovery with human insight. Our tools are designed to enhance, not replace, human judgment. The AI provides a starting point to evaluate investment ideas, a rapid way to filter stock selections. But humans ultimately decide which discoveries to pursue.

Looking ahead, we see immense potential for AI to augment financial analysis. Models trained on alternative data sources can uncover non-obvious insights. And generative AI could rapidly synthesize customized research and reports tailored to specific investor needs.

But for now, our focus is on overcoming friction in idea generation - helping investors efficiently navigate markets by prompting AI. We’re excited to continue developing Telescope’s AI infrastructure to unlock the possibilities of data-driven investing.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we leverage AI in finance, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re always eager to discuss the future of investing.