Maithra Raghu

In the early 2020s, when the large language models (LLMs) that power ChatGPT and other chatbots were under development in Silicon Valley, Maithra Raghu was thinking a step ahead. As an AI research scientist at Google, Raghu, 34, saw the appeal of using these models to create platforms that could engage in human-like conversation. But she was most excited about the possibilities this tech held to automate more research-intensive tasks, such as the data-gathering and analysis that underpins the world of finance.

But ChatGPT and other general-purpose LLMs weren’t great at handling specialized, real-time information. So Raghu, encouraged by friends working in finance, set out to build her own: Her startup, Samaya AI, launched in 2022. 

The company’s first AI-powered tool functions like a personal research assistant: It scours the web and users’ internal data to deliver research and analysis, which it can output in a variety of formats, including reports and presentations. It’s now in use at several financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley. 

Unlike most general-purpose chatbots, which rely on one large LLM, Samaya uses several specialized smaller models built in-house. They’re trained in a way that allows them to evolve together, improving their ability to retrieve high-quality information, extract insights from it, and place it all in context. This approach, Raghu says, enables tools that can more accurately sift through large volumes of data, thereby minimizing the risk of hallucination, or the proffering of false information.

For now, Samaya’s tech is being used primarily by research analysts: It can pinpoint a single figure buried in reams of documents, analyze more sources than they ever could, or keep tabs on real-time information. Yet early tests suggest the models might also be used to make automated performance forecasts—of companies or the wider economy.